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This marvelous screen comedienne's best asset was only muffled during her seven years' stint in silent films. That asset? It was, of course, her squeaky, frog-like voice, which silent-era cinema audiences had simply no way of perceiving, much less appreciating. Jean Arthur, born Gladys Georgianna Greene in upstate New York, 20 miles south of the Canadian border, has had her year of birth cited variously as 1900, 1905 and 1908. Her place of birth has often been cited as New York City! (Herein we shall rely for those particulars on Miss Arthur's obituary as given in the authoritative and reliable New York Times. The date and place indicated above shall be deemed correct.) Following her screen debut in a bit part in John Ford's Cameo Kirby (1923), she spent several years playing unremarkable roles as ingénue or leading lady in comedy shorts and cheapie westerns. With the arrival of sound she was able to appear in films whose quality was but slightly improved over that of her past silents. She had to contend, for example, with the consummately evil likes of Dr. Fu Manchu (played by future "Charlie Chan" Warner Oland). Her career bloomed with her appearance in Ford's The Whole Town's Talking (1935), in which she played opposite Edward G. Robinson, the latter in a dual role as a notorious gangster and his lookalike, a befuddled, well-meaning clerk. Here is where her wholesomeness and flair for farcical comedy began making themselves plain. The turning point in her career came when she was chosen by Frank Capra to star with Gary Cooper in the classic social comedy Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). Here she rescues the hero - thus herself becoming heroine! - from rapacious human vultures who are scheming to separate him from his wealth. In Capra's masterpiece Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), she again rescues a besieged hero (James Stewart), protecting him from a band of manipulative and cynical politicians and their cronies and again she ends up as a heroine of sorts. For her performance in George Stevens' The More the Merrier (1943), in which she starred with Joel McCrea and Charles Coburn, she received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination, but the award went to Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette (1943) (Coburn, incidentally, won for Best Supporting Actor). Her career began waning toward the end of the 1940s. She starred with Marlene Dietrich and John Lund in Billy Wilder's fluff about post-World War II Berlin, A Foreign Affair (1948). Thereafter, the actress would return to the screen but once, again for George Stevens but not in comedy. She starred with Alan Ladd and Van Heflin in Stevens' western Shane (1953), playing the wife of a besieged settler (Heflin) who accepts help from a nomadic gunman (Ladd) in the settler's effort to protect his farm. It was her silver-screen swansong. She would provide one more opportunity for a mass audience to appreciate her craft. In 1966 she starred as a witty and sophisticated lawyer, Patricia Marshall, a widow, in the TV series The Jean Arthur Show (1966). Her time was apparently past, however; the show ran for only 11 weeks.

Agnes was born of Anglo-Irish ancestry near Boston, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister (her mother was a mezzo-soprano) who encouraged her to perform in church pageants. Aged three, she sang 'The Lord is my Shepherd' on a public stage and seven years later joined the St. Louis Municipal Opera as a dancer and singer for four years. In keeping with her father's dictum of finishing her education first (then being permitted to do whatever she wished with her career), Agnes attended Muskingum College (Ohio), and, subsequently, the University of Wisconsin. She graduated with an M.A. in English and public speaking and later added a doctorate in literature from Bradley University to her resume. When her family moved to Reedsburg, Wisconsin, where her father had a pastorate, Agnes taught public school English and drama for five years. In between, she went to Paris to study pantomime with Marcel Marceau.

In 1928, she began training at the American Academy for Dramatic Arts and graduated with honors the following year. In order to supplement her income , Agnes had turned to radio early on. She had her first job in 1923 as a singer for a St. Louis radio station. Her love for that medium remained with her all her life. From the 1930s to the 50s, she appeared on numerous serials, dramas and children's programs. She was Min Gump in "The Gumps" (1934), the 'dragon lady' in "Terry and the Pirates" (1937), Margot Lane of classic comic strip fame in "The Shadow", Mrs.Danvers in "Rebecca" and the bed-ridden woman about to meet her end in "Sorry, Wrong Number". Acting on the airwaves was so important to her that she would insist on its continuation as a precondition of a later contract with MGM. Significantly, through her radio work on "The Shadow"and "March of Time" in 1937, she met and befriended fellow actor Orson Welles. Welles soon invited her to join him and Joseph Cotten as charter members of his Mercury Theatre on the Air. Agnes was involved in the famous "War of the Worlds" broadcast of 1938 which attracted nationwide attention and resulted in a lucrative $100,000 per picture deal with RKO in Hollywood. The Mercury players (the other principals were Ray Collins, Everett Sloane, Paul Stewart and George Coulouris) packed up and went west.

An ebullient and versatile character actress, Agnes was impossible to typecast: she could play years older than her age, appear as heroine or villainess, tragedienne or comedienne. In her first film, the iconic Citizen Kane (1941), she played the titular character's mother. She received her greatest critical acclaim for her emotive second screen performance as Aunt Fanny Minafer in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). In addition to being voted the year's best female performer by the New York Film Critics she was also nominated for an Academy Award. Through the years, Agnes would be nominated three more times: for her touching portrayal of the jaded but sympathetic Baroness Conti in Mrs. Parkington (1944); for her role as the title character's Aunt Aggie in Johnny Belinda (1948) and for playing Velma, the hard-boiled, suspicious housekeeper of Bette Davis in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), co-starring her old friend Joseph Cotten. Other notable film appearances included Jane Eyre (1943), with Orson Welles, The Woman in White (1948) as Countess Fusco), The Lost Moment (1947) (as a 105-year old woman) and Dark Passage (1947), a classic film noir in which she had third billing behind Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall as the treacherous , malevolent Madge Rapf. She had a rare starring role in the campy horror flick The Bat (1959), giving (according to the New York Times of December 17) 'a good, snappy performance'.

On Broadway, she appeared in such acclaimed plays as "All the King's Men" and "Candlelight". She enjoyed success with "Don Juan in Hell", touring nationally: the first time (1951-2) with Charles Laughton and Cedric Hardwicke, the second time (though receiving fewer critical plaudits) with Ricardo Montalban and Paul Henreid in 1973. She also starred with Joseph Cotten in "Prescription Murder" (1962). While not a great critical success, this was much liked by audiences and it introduced a famous detective named Lieutenant Columbo. From 1954, she also toured the U.S. and Europe with her own a one-woman show entitled "The Fabulous Redhead". Agnes performed numerous times on television before landing the role of Endora on Bewitched (1964). One particularly interesting part came her way through the director Douglas Heyes who remembered her from "Sorry, Wrong Number". He cast her in the starring - and indeed, only role in The Invaders (1961). As the lonely old woman confronted by tiny alien invaders in her remote farmhouse, Agnes never utters a single word and cleverly acts her scenes as a pantomime of unspoken terror.

Of course, the genial Agnes Moorehead has been immortalized as Elizabeth Montgomery's flamboyant witch-mother, Endora, although that was not a role the actress wished to be remembered for (in spite of several Emmy Award nominations). Indeed, she had thought this whole witchcraft theme to be rather far-fetched and was somewhat taken aback by the show's huge popularity. Agnes had a special clause inserted in her contract which limited her appearances to eight out of twelve episodes which gave her the opportunity to also work on other projects. Commenting on the acting profession in one of her many interviews (New York Times, May 1, 1974), she found the key to success in being " sincere in your work " and to "just go right on whether audiences or critics are taking your scalp off or not".

Spencer Tracy was the second son born on April 5, 1900, to truck salesman John Edward and Caroline Brown Tracy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While attending Marquette Academy, he and classmate Pat O'Brien quit school to enlist in the Navy at the start of World War I. Tracy was still at Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia at the end of the war. After playing the lead in the play "The Truth" at Ripon College he decided that acting might be his career.

Moving to New York, Tracy and O'Brien, who'd also settled on a career on the stage, roomed together while attending the Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 1923 both got nonspeaking parts as robots in "R.U.R.", a dramatization of the groundbreaking science fiction novel by Czech author Karel Capek. Making very little money in stock, Tracy supported himself with jobs as bellhop, janitor and salesman until John Ford saw his critically acclaimed performance in the lead role in the play "The Last Mile" (later played on film by Clark Gable) and signed him for The William Fox Film Company's production of Up the River (1930). Despite appearing in sixteen films at that studio over the next five years, Tracy was never able to rise to full film star status there, in large part because the studio was unable to match his talents to suitable story material.

During that period the studio itself floundered, eventually merging with Darryl F. Zanuck, Joseph Schenck and William Goetz's William 20th Century Pictures to become 20th Century-Fox). In 1935 Tracy signed with MGM under the aegis of Irving Thalberg and his career flourished. He became the first actor to win back-to-back Best Actor Oscars for Captains Courageous (1937) and, in a project he initially didn't want to star in, Boys Town (1938).

During Tracy's nearly forty-year film career, he was nominated for his performances in San Francisco (1936), Father of the Bride (1950), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Old Man and the Sea (1958), Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967).

Tracy had a brief romantic relationship with Loretta Young in the mid-1930s, and a lifelong one with Katharine Hepburn beginning in 1942 after they were first paired in Woman of the Year by director George Stevens. Tracy's strong Roman Catholic beliefs precluded his divorcing wife Louise, though they mostly lived apart. Tracy suffered from severe alcoholism and diabetes (from the late 1940s), which led to his declining several tailor-made roles in films that would become big hits with other actors in those roles. Although his drinking problems were well known, he was considered peerless among his colleagues (Tracy had a well-deserved reputation for keeping co-stars on their toes for his oddly endearing scene-stealing tricks), and remained in demand as a senior statesman who nevertheless retained box office clout. Two weeks after completion of Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), during which he suffered from lung congestion, Spencer Tracy died of a heart attack.

Known as "The First lady of the American Theater", Helen Hayes had a legendary career on stage and in films and television that spanned over eighty years. Hayes was born in Washington, D.C., to Catherine Estelle "Essie" Hayes, an actress who worked in touring companies, and Francis van Arnum Brown, a clerk and salesman. Her maternal grandparents were Irish. A child actress in the first decade of the 20th century, by the time she turned twenty in 1920 she was well on her way to a landmark career on the American stage, becoming perhaps the greatest female star of the theatre during the 1930s and 1940s. She made a handful of scattered films during the silent era and in 1931 was signed to MGM with great fanfare to begin a career starring in films. Her first three films, Arrowsmith (1931), The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931), and A Farewell to Arms (1932), were great hits and she would win the 1932 Oscar for Best Actress for her work in Madelon Claudet. Alas, her lack of screen glamour worked against her becoming a box office star during the golden era of Hollywood, and her subsequent films were often not well received by critics. Within four years she had abandoned the screen and returned to the stage for the greatest success of her career, "Victoria Regina", which ran for three years starting in 1935. Helen Hayes returned to motion pictures with a few featured roles in 1950s films and frequently appeared on television. In 1970, she made a screen comeback in Airport (1970), a role originally offered to Claudette Colbert, who declined it, earning Hayes her second Oscar, this time for Best Supporting Actress. Helen Hayes retired from the stage in 1971 but enjoyed enormous fame and popularity over the next fifteen years with many roles in motion pictures and television productions, retiring in 1985 after starring in the TV film Murder with Mirrors (1985).

The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior), and subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the university there, where his close friends included Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca.

After moving to Paris, Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs in Paris, including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein. With financial assistance from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film, the 17-minute Un chien andalou (1929), in 1929, and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its shocking imagery (much of which - like the sliced eyeball at the beginning - still packs a punch even today). It made a deep impression on the Surrealist Group, who welcomed Buñuel into their ranks.

The following year, sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first feature, the scabrous witty and violent L'âge d'or (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career. That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War he emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros.

Moving to Mexico in the late 1940s, he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in The Young and the Damned (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival.

But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries (though many of them are well worth seeking out). But in 1961, General Franco, anxious to be seen to be supporting Spanish culture invited Buñuel back to his native country - and Bunuel promptly bit the hand that fed him by making Viridiana (1961), which was banned in Spain on the grounds of blasphemy, though it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

This inaugurated Buñuel's last great period when, in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière he made seven extraordinary late masterpieces, starting with Diary of a Chambermaid (1964). Although far glossier and more expensive, and often featuring major stars such as Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve, the films showed that even in old age Buñuel had lost none of his youthful vigour.

After saying that every one of his films from Belle de Jour (1967) onwards would be his last, he finally kept his promise with That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), after which he wrote a memorable (if factually dubious) autobiography, in which he said he'd be happy to burn all the prints of all his films

• a classic Surrealist gesture if ever there was one.

Born in 1900, he worked in vaudeville as a child and appeared in Broadway in "A Good Little Devil." As an adult he continued to appear in vaudeville but also joined various circuses and Midget Troupes. He had a specialist interest in portraying animals and was a veteran animal impersonator. He appeared in his second Broadway show "Fine and Dandy" in 1930. In 1939, due to his short stature and animal impersonating skills, he appeared in The Wizard of Oz (1939) as Nikko, the flying monkey. This made him very famous and he continued to perform in vaudeville. He also made two other film appearances in Panic in the Streets (1950) and Roseanna McCoy (1949). Died in 1991 and, by this time, he was the last surviving credited cast member of The Wizard of Oz.

Natalie Schafer got her start doing Broadway plays then making the move to the big screen. Even before Gilligan's Island (1964), she was typecast in roles as society women, or elegant, fashionable ladies. It was her role as "Eunice 'Lovey' Wentworth Howell" wife of multi-millionaire Thurston Howell III, that she was best known for. After the show ended its run in 1967, Schafer did a few guest appearances on shows, most notably The Brady Bunch (1969).

Born in Staunton, Virginia, William Haines ran off to live life on his own terms while still in his teens, moving to New York City and becoming friends with such later Hollywood luminaries as designer Orry-Kelly and Cary Grant. His film career started slowly, but by the end of the silent era he was regularly named as the #1 male box-office draw. He also became fast friends with a number of contemporaries, such as Joan Crawford and Marion Davies, whose fame would eclipse his. His career faded rapidly in the early 1930s, and he was finally released allegedly due to a fight with MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer over Haines' refusal to end his relationship with his lover, Jimmie Shields. However, as his film career ended, his interior design career blossomed, resulting in major work for Jack L. Warner and the Bloomingdales, and culminating in the refurbishing of the American ambassador's residence in London, England. Although Haines was quite open about his homosexuality and entertained many of Hollywood's gay set - including George Cukor and Clifton Webb - his story is missing from many histories of the era. Haines and Shields remained a couple for 50 years; Crawford called them "the happiest married couple in Hollywood."

The son of Alexander Sim JP and Isabella McIntyre, Alastair Sim was educated in Edinburgh. Always interested in language (especially the spoken word) he became the Fulton Lecturer in Elocution at New College, Edinburgh University from 1925 until 1930. He was invited back and became the Rector of Edinburgh University (1948 - 1951). His first stage appearance was as Messenger in Othello at the Savoy Theatre, London. He went on to create some of the most memorable (usually comedic) roles in British films from 1936 until his death in 1976.

Lloyd Corrigan was born on 16 October 1900 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and The Chase (1946). He died on 5 November 1969 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Dorothy Adams was born on 8 January 1900 in Hannah, North Dakota, USA. She was an actress, known for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), The Killing (1956) and The Ten Commandments (1956). She was married to Byron Foulger. She died on 16 March 1988 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Born in turn-of-the-century Yonkers, New York, Robert Shayne (born Robert Shaen Dawe) worked at a variety of jobs before his interests ultimately turned toward acting. He appeared in a succession of legit theater productions throughout the 1930s and even appeared in a few films, making a comedy short in New York in 1929, two features in 1934 and a comedy short shot in New York in 1937. In 1942 he signed with Warner Brothers and trekked to Hollywood, where he became a contract player at their Culver City studios. Warners starred the newly-arrived stage actor in a series of two-reel Westerns before graduating him to supporting roles in "A"-level features. In 1946 he left the studio to freelance. Several years later he got involved in the infant medium of TV, where he played the part for which he is best remembered--Inspector Henderson in the series Adventures of Superman (1952).

Actor, composer, songwriter, guitarist and author. He moved from Broadway acting (1928-1932) into films, touring America with his wife and daughter, and did some recordings. He was the executive producer at the El Camino Playhouse in California. Joining ASCAP in 1953, his chief musical collaborator was Perry Botkin. His popular-song compositions include "Good Ship Lalapaloo" and "Two Shillelagh O'Sullivan".

Gage Clarke was born on 3 March 1900 in Vassar, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for The Bad Seed (1956), I Want to Live! (1958) and The Twilight Zone (1959). He died on 23 October 1964 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Tall, lean, austere-looking Austrian character actor, whose chiselled features appeared on screen in small parts from 1945. Friedrich was the younger brother of renowned Viennese stage and film actor and director Leopold von Ledebur, both descended from a distinguished aristocratic family (their forebears included several high-ranking luminaries among the clergy, as well as political and military leaders). As a cavalry officer in an Ulan (Light Cavalry) Regiment of the Austro-Hungarian Army, he saw action during the First World War. Friedrich was a superb rider, a skill which later stood him in good stead as a trainer of horses for the film industry. After the war, having gained an engineering diploma (which he rarely, if ever, put to use), he spent the next two decades travelling the world, working all manner of odd jobs from gold mining to deep sea diving, to riding and winning prize money at rodeos. Having finally settled down in the United States in 1939, he eventually anglicised his name to 'Frederick'.

A close friendship with a fellow adventurer, the director John Huston, paved the way for more substantial character roles in Hollywood. The first and best of these was as the laconic cannibal Queeqeg, chief harpooneer on the ship "Pequod" in Huston's Moby Dick (1956). This is unquestionably the role for which he is best remembered. Friedrich came to specialise in eccentric character roles, ranging from stoic Indian chiefs to Vikings, from German Field Marshals to imposing Pirate Captains and Spanish aristocrats. Latterly white-maned, he popped up in a wide variety of genres, from historical epics, to spy thrillers and European westerns, even as one of the monastic guardians of the devil in the "The Howling Man" episode of The Twilight Zone (1959).

The actor was first married to English actress, poet and noted wit Iris Tree. His second wife (from 1955) was the Countess Alice Hoyos, who was descended from a titled Spanish dynasty, latterly resident in Austria.

Fritz Feld was born on 15 October 1900 in Berlin, Germany. He was an actor and production manager, known for Bringing Up Baby (1938), Hello, Dolly! (1969) and Out Where the Stars Begin (1938). He was married to Virginia Christine and Idea Wickham Von Koppen. He died on 18 November 1993 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Ian Hunter was born in the Kenilworth area of Cape Town, South Africa where he spent his childhood. In his teen years he and his parents returned to the family origins in England to live. Sometime between that arrival and the early years of World War I, Hunter began exploring acting, then in 1917 - and being only 17 - he joined the army to serve in France for the last year of the conflict still remaining. Within two years he did indeed make his stage-acting debut. Hunter would never forget the stage was the thing when the lure of movie making called - he would always return through his career. With a jovial face perpetually on the verge of smiling and a friendly and mildly English accent, Hunter had good guy lead written all over him. He decided to sample the relatively young British silent film industry by taking a part in Not for Sale (1924) for British director W.P. Kellino who had started out writing and acting for the theater. Hunter then made his first trip to the U.S. - Broadway, not Hollywood - because Basil Dean, well known British actor, director, and producer, was producing Sheridan's "The School for Scandal" at the Knickerbocker Theater - unfortunately folding after one performance. It was a more concerted effort with film the next year back in Britain, again with Kellino. He then met up-and-coming mystery and suspense director Alfred Hitchcock in 1927. He did Hitch's The Ring (1927) - about the boxing game, not suspense - and stayed for the director's Downhill (1927). And with a few more films into the next year he was back with Hitchcock once more for Easy Virtue (1928), the Noël Coward play. By late 1928 he returned to Broadway for only a month's run in the original comedy "Olympia" but stayed on in the United States via his first connection with Hollywood. The film was Syncopation (1929), his first sound film and that for RKO, that is, one of the early mono efforts, sound mix with the usual silent acting. As if restless to keep ever cycling back and forth across the Atlantic - fairly typical of Hunter's career - he returned to London for Dean's mono thriller Escape! (1930). There was an interval of fifteen films in all before Hunter returned to Hollywood and by then he was well established as a leading man. With The Girl from 10th Avenue (1935) with Bette Davis, Hunter made his connection with Warner Bros. But before settling in with them through much of the 1930s, he did three pictures in succession with another gifted and promising British director, Michael Powell. He then began the films he is most remembered from Hollywood's Golden Era. Although a small part, he is completely engaging and in command as the Duke in the Shakespearean extravaganza of Austrian theater master Max Reinhardt, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) for Warner Bros. It marked the start of a string of nearly thirty films for WB. Among the best remembered was his jovial King Richard in the rollicking The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Hunter was playing the field as well - he was at Twentieth Century as everybody's favorite father-hero - including Shirley Temple - in the The Little Princess (1939). And he was the unforgettable benign guardian angel-like Cambreau in Loew's Strange Cargo (1940) with Clark Gable. He was staying regularly busy in Hollywood until into 1942 when he returned to Britain to serve in the war effort. After the war Hunter stayed on in London, making films and doing stage work. He appeared once more on Broadway in 1948 and made Edward, My Son (1949) for George Cukor. Although there was some American playhouse theater in the mid-1950s, Hunter was bound to England, working once more for Powell in 1961 before retiring in the middle of that decade after nearly a hundred outings before the camera.

A dapper, debonair, darkly attractive leading man of 1920s stage and '30s screen, actor David Manners was born Rauff de Ryther Duan Acklom on April 30, 1900, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. A highly serviceable, if sometimes overshadowed, co-star opposite Hollywood's top 1930s female superstars, It seems ironic that, out of all these beautiful leading lady co-stars, his best-remembered pairings were opposite Dracula and the Mummy!

Of well-to-do stock, David was the son of British parents Lilian Manners Acklom and writer George Moreby Acklom, who was, at the time, the headmaster of Harrow House School, a renowned private boarding school in Halifax. His mother's lineage alleges Lady Diana Cooper and the Duke of Rutland as descendants, while his father's family tree includes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Moving to New York City in 1907, his father found work as a major editor and literary advisor for the publishing firm E.P. Dutton. Employed while young as an assistant publisher, it seemed David might follow into his father's career footsteps. Instead he returned to Canada to study forestry at the University of Toronto. While there he joined the university's theatre group and, through them, made his debut at the city's Hart House Theatre in the Euripides' play "Hippolytus".

Against his father's steadfast objections, Manners left college in early 1923, with only months away from graduation, when he was invited to join Basil Sydney's Touring Co. Firmly dedicated now to performing, he settled in New York City after the tour and enrolled at the Trinity School of drama where he first performed as Fernando in "The Tempest". He subsequently became a member of Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Co. in New York. One theatre highlight was appearing in the 1924 Broadway play "Dancing Mothers" with legendary Helen Hayes at the Booth Theatre.

In Los Angeles from 1927, David made an uncredited film debut in the action adventure The Sky Hawk (1929) headlining lovely Helen Chandler. It was famed director James Whale who opened the doors wide open while searching out a film cast for Journey's End (1930) after its highly successful Broadway run. Witnessing David's work in a New York play, Whale hired him to portray idealistic, innocent-eyed 2nd Lt. Raleigh opposite star Colin Clive's Capt. Stanhope. The film was critically acclaimed and it paved the way for David to play glossy romantic co-stars.

Following David and lovely Frances Dade played the third and fourth-billed love interest behind stars Lowell Sherman and Alice Joyce in the romantic comedy He Knew Women (1930), the nascent film actor moved right to the head of the class with the crime drama Sweet Mama (1930) opposite Tessa Wells, who tries to save him from a gangster's life. He next played Caliph Abdallah opposite Loretta Young's Marsinsah in the musical fantasy Kismet (1930) and then found himself entangled in a romantic quartet with Young, Conway Tearle and Myrna Loy in the romancer The Truth About Youth (1930). By this time David had reached heartthrob status playing these well-bred gents, finding himself occasionally on the "top 10" list of popular film actors.

Reunited with Helen Chandler in the family drama Mother's Cry (1930), David's next role as John Harker (opposite Chandler playing the ill-fated Mina) would become his most famous. As the nagging nemesis to Bela Lugosi's lethal Count in Universal's granddaddy of horror classics, Dracula (1931), the Harker role would follow him the rest of his life. This visibility allowed a permanent "in" as a glitzy movie charmer opposite Hollywood's finest lady divas. His bevy of beautiful stars included Barbara Stanwyck in the Frank Capra drama The Miracle Woman (1931); Constance Bennett in Lady with a Past (1932); Kay Francis in Man Wanted (1932); Katharine Hepburn in A Bill of Divorcement (1932); and Loretta Young once again in They Call It Sin (1932).

David reunited with his "Dracula" stars Lugosi and Edward Van Sloan (who played Van Helsing) with the murder mystery The Death Kiss (1932), then hopped aboard the "horror express" once again in his second classic, The Mummy (1932), wherein he plays a similar damsel-saving Harker role (Frank Whemple) out to outdo Boris Karloff's nefarious creature. As usual, David continued with ritzy co-leads and second leads in such films as From Hell to Heaven (1933) starring Carole Lombard; The Devil's in Love (1933) with Loretta Young once again; and The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) starring Claudette Colbert. A third terror opus had Dave joining both Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the horror stars' first pairing). In The Black Cat (1934), David and his newlywed wife are menaced by Karloff's Satanic architect.

After playing the title role in the mystery horror Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), a starring role as an ex-con arrested for a syndicate murder in the crime mystery The Perfect Clue (1935), a featured role in a lesser Katharine Hepburn feminist film A Woman Rebels (1936), and a lead role in the "B" level Canadian crime drama Lucky Fugitives (1936), David, tired of the Hollywood grind and pretentiousness, called it quits in films. Returning to stage tours and summer stock, he showed up on Broadway in the short-lived plays "Truckline Café" (with a cast including a young Marlon Brando) and "Hidden Horizon", both in early 1946. At the end of the year he served as a Broadway replacement in a revival of "Lady Windemere's Fan". In 1953, Manners retired from acting entirely.

Early back in 1933, Manners had bought and designed a ranch in the Mojave desert, which he called Rancho Yucca Loma. After Hollywood, he spent much time there making home movies, writing and painting. In 1941 he published his first novel Convenient Season, which was followed by a second, Under Running Laughter, in 1943. Both were published by E.P. Dutton. David was once married briefly (1929-1932) to Suzanne Bushnell. In 1948, he established a long-term personal relationship with playwright Frederic William ("Bill") Mercer (1918-1978). The couple remained together in California until Bill's death.

After his Hollywood years, David re-intensified his strong spiritual interest and took a path that resulted in a number of philosophical writings. Look Through: An Evidence of Self Discovery was published in 1971 and his esoteric book Awakening from the Dream of Me came out in 1987. His journal writings, from 1973 on, were published posthumously as The Wonder Within You in 2006. The nonagenarian's health began to decline in 1993 and on December 23, 1998, he died at a Santa Barbara facility at the age of 97.

Who could forget Colin Clive's "It's Alive! It's Alive!" as he melted to the floor mumbling the same over and over in ecstasy after his success at animating the Monster in the first sound version of Frankenstein (1931). Film history - horror film history - but part of a short history for actor Colin Clive - he died at 37 years of age. The son of a British army colonel on assignment in France at the time of Colin's birth, Clive the younger might have been expected to follow an army career-his ancestor was Baron Robert Clive, founder of the British Indian Empire. But he became interested in theater instead. His acting talents progressed through the 1920s to sufficient degree to replace Laurence Olivier who was starring in the R. C Sherriff play "Journey's End" in London. The director was up-and-coming James Whale, who had also been working his way up in London stage and film work as a budding scene designer and director. Among his stage and entertainment acquaintances in London was Elsa Lanchester - the future bride of Frankenstein. When Olivier moved on to other stage work, the play moved to the Savoy Theater in London with Clive in the lead in 1928.

Whale was waiting for the opportunity to move onto Broadway and Hollywood films. The success of "Journey's End" gave Whale his break. Broadway called for the play with him as both director and scene designer. It opened in March of 1929 but with Colin Keith-Johnston in the lead. Nevertheless, Clive came to New York as well to await developments. Halfway through 1930, the play had ended, and Whale was contracted by Paramount as a dialog director. Things continued to unfold quickly. Whale was very soon called on to direct what would be the first British/American co-produced sound film, a movie version of the popular Journey's End (1930). Whale got Clive back as the lead-the laconic, alcoholic Capt. Stanhope. And Clive showed on screen what came out in his stage performances - a measured intensity to his character, bolstered by his unique cracked baritone voice - seemingly always on the edge of irritation. Clive's first picture then led to opportunities in both British and American films. But he got his first play on Broadway "Overture" in late 1930 which ended in January of 1931. Then it was back to London where he was prophetically cast with Lanchester in The Stronger Sex (1931).

As they say, what came next was film history. Whale was contracted by Universal where Dracula (1931) had just been a huge hit and the studio was looking for a quick follow up. Shelley's Frankenstein was optioned as the next 'horror' movie with Whale directing. Whale wanted Clive as Dr. Henry Frankenstein, and it all came together. Clive played the tortured legitimate doctor driven to macabre surgery and near insanity with over-the-top theatrics that would type him for the remainder of his short career.

The next few years he played both B leading and A supporting roles. Two apt examples were playing brooding but romantic Edward Rochester in an early Jane Eyre (1934) and playing a British officer in Clive of India (1935) in which Ronald Colman - not he - played his illustrious ancestor. Clive returned to Broadway for two plays in 1933 and 1934 and one more in the 1935-36 season. Then it was back to Universal for the "Bride" sequel of Frankenstein (1935) in which his Dr. Henry was somewhat more subdued. This was mostly to do with a broken leg suffered from a horseback riding accident. He is seen doing a lot of sitting or lying down because of it. Dour and sour seemed to be his trademark, bolstered that much more with the remainder of his films in which he was usually disturbed supporting characters.

His final two films were in early 1937 with the better known History Is Made at Night (1937) - awkward type-casting him as the world's most sour grapes ex-husband, Bruce Vail, who engineers a sure collision of his new steamship with any available iceberg in foggy weather to hopefully drown his ex-wife Jean Arthur and her romantic true love Charles Boyer. But the sinking ship is stabilized and the lovers are saved to live happily ever after. Ironically, but befitting such a deed in Hollywood ethics, Vail shoots himself.

Ironically, Clive, suffering from tuberculosis, furthered along by chronic alcoholism, died not long after in late June of 1937.

Bert Palmer was born on 22 April 1900 in Easingwold, Yorkshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for A Kind of Loving (1962), The Avengers (1961) and Nearest and Dearest (1968). He was married to Lynne Carol. He died on 15 January 1980 in Blackpool, Lancashire, England, UK.

Mike Lally was born on 1 June 1900 in Manhattan, New York, USA. He was an actor and assistant director, known for Coma (1978), Two-Fisted Gentleman (1936) and How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955). He was married to Pauline Wagner. He died on 15 February 1985 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

One of the finest, if relatively short-lived, character actresses of Hollywood, during the 1930s and 1940, Gladys George was born into an acting family who were literally on the road at the time of her birth.

Her parents were actually English and touring with a Shakespearean theater company in Patten, Maine, when she was born (although usually noted as 1900, other sources put it as late as 1904). Her parents stayed in America, and by the time she was 3, they formed a vaudeville family act; The Three Clares (Gladys's middle name).

Beginning then, George would focus herself on developing an acting career.

As George gained experience, she developed an interest in the stage and while still in her teens, she first trod the Broadway boards in 1918 in the original play "The Betrothal", the star being Isadora Duncan. Her experience in stock meshed with her natural talent and a face to frame the emotion of great pathos as well as hard cased and worldly wise. She was in good hands when she worked for the famous Broadway star Pauline Frederick, who made a fortune on ' The Great White Way', and via her touring stock company.

Frederick's career took on new dimension when she turned to film as well (1915), and George was probably influenced to follow her.

George began working in silent films - first as the young female romantic lead in Red Hot Dollars (1919) and would steadily move in lead and good costarring roles through 1921.

Around this time, George was severely burned in an accident which caused a delay in her early film career. She returned to stock and married for the first time.

By 1934, she had a new husband - the millionaire manufacturer, Edward H Fowler who was able to further her career. After only a month into her next show (Queer People)'s run, George abruptly left the company, when Paramount offered her a screen test. After the test, MGM signed her for a contract. Her first film was not surprisingly an adapted play, Straight Is the Way (1934). In this, her first sound picture, George played the mouthy bad girl to good effect, displaying her acting ability.

In her personal life, she had a socialite's talent for partying, and alcohol, and romance on the edge. She had only been married to Fowler about a year when he found her with her leading man from her then-Broadway hit comedy, Personal Appearance (ironically, she played a carousing, man-hungry star, and the press loved the coincidence).

Her next film was not until 1936 and as a loan-out to Paramount, but it was pay-dirt for George, as the mother-against-the-world, in Valiant Is the Word for Carrie (1936),George made her role the film's focus, and she was so good at that she received a Best Actress nomination for that year. It and perhaps her personal life had much to do with her biggest role the next year, Madame X (1937), as the long suffering soap opera-like Jacqueline Floriot.

Though some mark it as the beginning of a downturn to character roles, George pulled out all the stops, and played the role of Madame du Barry, in Marie Antoinette (1938) (starring, Norma Shearer with real gumption

Sadly, over the next year, physical changes caused by her carousing lifestyle were becoming more apparent (as the speakeasy owner, Panama Smith in The Roaring Twenties (1939) with its famous ending of the fatally wounded James Cagney staggering up the church steps after having rubbed out old rival Humphrey Bogart. He staggers back down diagonally and falls professionally face up with George quickly kneeling next to him. 'He used to be a big shot', she says as the police arrive).

In the 1940s, George spent a year-or-so on Broadway,and was cast in several soap opera B-films, where she alternated between sympathetic, or tough-as-nails characters. She was usually right on, but the roles were throwaways, compared to what she was capable of doing.

Her most well-remembered role of this period was as the widow of murdered detective, Miles Archer, in the legendary The Maltese Falcon (1941) (with Humphrey Bogart, once again). One is hard-put to even recognize her in black lace, mourning profiles and the few lines she has.

The same year she had a good comedic lead role, displaying her range - from hard headed to soft hearted with the Dead End Kids in Hit the Road (1941).

But a standout role of the decade was so small, and yet it was subtlety nuanced for showing how she excelled at displaying pathos of the human condition, in the great classic of post-World War II homecoming, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). As Hortense Derry, she was the second wife of aging failure Pat Derry (played by Roman Bohnen). That they lived near poverty's starkly shown in their 'home'; a hovel under an overpass. George, frowzy with little makeup and clutching her old threadbare robe, eagerly patronizing and quick to speak, with a slight edge in her voice.

Except for showing some of the old fire in her supporting role in Flamingo Road (1949), George only appeared in a few more roles; including a couple of brief TV appearances in the early 1950s.

Sadly, Gladys George was worn out; her hard living lifestyle, having caused her serious afflictions, including cirrhosis of the liver, advancing throat cancer, and cumulative heart disease. Though she's listed as having passed away due to a stroke, there was suspicion that she had taken an overdose of sleeping pills to put an end to her story.

Ricardo Cortez was born Jacob Krantz in New York City, New York, the son of Sarah (Lefkowitz) and Moses/Morris Krantz, Austrian Jewish immigrants who moved to New York just before he was born. His brother was cinematographer Stanley Cortez, who also changed his surname. Cortez worked a number of jobs while he trained as an actor. When Jacob he arrived in Hollywood to work in movies in 1922, the Rudolph Valentino craze was in full bloom. Never shy about changing a name and a background, the studio transformed Jacob Krantz into "Latin Lover" Ricardo Cortez from Spain. Such was life in Hollywood.

Starting with small parts, the tall and dark Cortez was being groomed by Paramount to be the successor to Valentino, but Cortez would never be viewed (or consider himself) as the equal to the late sex symbol. A popular star, he was saddled in a number of run-of-the-mill romantic movies that would depend more on his looks than on the script--pictures such as Argentine Love (1924) and The Cat's Pajamas (1926) did little to extend his range as an actor. He did show that he had some range with his role in Pony Express (1924), but roles like that were few and far between.

Cortez' career, unlike some other silent-screen stars, survived the advent of sound, and he would play Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1931) (aka "Dangerous Female"). Never a great actor, Cortez was cast as the smirking womanizer in a number of films and would soon slide down into "B" movies. He played a newspaper columnist in Is My Face Red? (1932), a home wrecker in A Lost Lady (1934), a killer in Man Hunt (1936) and even Perry Mason in The Case of the Black Cat (1936).

After 1936 Cortez hit a dry patch as far as acting work was concerned and tried his hand at directing. His career as a director ended after a half-dozen movies and his screen career soon followed. He retired from the screen and returned to Wall Street, where he had worked as a runner decades before. This time he returned as a member of one of Wall Street's top brokerage firms and lived a comfortable life.

Robert Siodmak (8 August 1900 - 10 March 1973) was a German-born, American film director. He is best remembered as a thriller specialist and for a series of stylish, unpretentious Hollywood films noirs he made in the 1940s.

Siodmak (pronounced SEE-ODD-MACK) was born in Dresden, Germany, the son of Rosa Philippine (née Blum) and Ignatz Siodmak. His parents were both from Jewish families in Leipzig (the myth of his American birth in Memphis, Tennessee was necessary for him to obtain a visa in Paris during World War II). He worked as a stage director and a banker before becoming editor and scenarist for Curtis Bernhardt in 1925 (Bernhardt would direct a film of Siodmak's story "Conflict" in 1945). At twenty-six he was hired by his cousin, producer Seymour Nebenzal, to assemble original silent movies from stock footage of old films. Siodmak worked at this for two years before he persuaded Nebenzal to finance his first feature, the silent chef d'oeuvre, "Menschen am Sonntag" ("People on Sunday") in1929. The script was co-written by Billy Wilder and Siodmak's brother Curt Siodmak, later the screenwriter of "The Wolf Man" (1941). It was the last German silent and also included such future Hollywood artists as Fred Zinnemann, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Eugen Schufftan. His next film--the first at UFA to use sound--was the 1930 comedy "Abschied" for writers Emeric Pressburger and Irma von Cube, followed by "Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht," another comedy, yet quite different and unusual, a likely product of Billy Wilder's imagination (remade a noir, "DOA," in 1950). But in his next film, the crime thriller "Stürme der Leidenschaft," with Emil Jannings and Anna Sten, Siodmak found a style that would become his own.

With the rise of Nazism and following an attack in the press by Hitler's minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels in 1933 after viewing "Brennendes Geheimnis" ("The Burning Secret"), Siodmak left Germany for Paris. His creativity flourished, as he worked for the next six years in a variety of film genres, from comedy ("Le sexe fable" and "La Vie Parisienne" ) to musical ("La crise est finie," with Danielle Darrieux) to drama ("Mister Flow," "Cargaison blanche," "Mollenard"--compare Gabrielle Dorziat's shrewish wife with that of Rosalind Ivan's in "The Suspect"--and the superb "Pièges," with Maurice Chevalier and Erich Von Stroheim). While in France, he was well on his way to becoming successor to Rene Clair, until Hitler again forced him out. Siodmak arrived in Hollywood in 1939, where he made 23 movies, many of them widely popular thrillers and crime melodramas, which critics today regard as classics of film noir.

Beginning in 1941, he first turned out several B-films and programmers for various studios before he gained a seven-year contract with Universal Studios in 1943. The best of those early films are the thriller "Fly by Night" in 1942, with Richard Carlson and Nancy Kelly, and in 1943 the touching weepie "Someone to Remember," with Mable Paige in a signature role. As house director, his services were often used to salvage troublesome productions at the studio. On Mark Hellinger's production "Swell Guy" (1946), for instance, Siodmak was brought in to replace Frank Tuttle only six days after completing work on "The Killers." Siodmak worked steadily while under contract, overshadowed by high profile directors, like Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he had been often compared by the press.

At Universal, Siodmak made yet another B-film, "Son of Dracula"(1943), the third and best in a trilogy of Dracula movies (based on his brother Curt's original story). His second feature, and first A-film, was the Maria Montez/Jon Hall vehicle, "Cobra Woman" (1944), made in garish Technicolor (Montez's cobra dance alone is worth the price of admission).

His first all-out noir was "Phantom Lady" (1944), for staff producer Joan Harrison, Universal's first female executive and Alfred Hitchcock's former secretary and script assistant. A classic, however flawed, it showcased Siodmak's skill with camera and editing to dazzling effect, but no more so than in the iconic jam-session sequence with Elisha Cook Jr. in throes on the drums. Following the critical success of "Phantom Lady," Siodmak directed "Christmas Holiday" (1944) with Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly (Hans J. Salter received an Oscar nomination for best music). Beginning with this film, his work in Hollywood attained the stylistic and thematic characteristics that are evident in his later noirs. "Christmas Holiday," adapted from a W. Somerset Maugham novel by Herman J. Mankiewicz, was Durbin's most successful feature, which she considered her only good film (and that Mankiewicz said was among his work in the 40s of which he was most proud). Siodmak's use of black-and-white cinematography and urban landscapes, together with his light-and-shadow designs, formed the basic structure of classic noir films. In fact, he often collaborated with cinematographers, such as Nicholas Musuraca, Elwood Bredell, and Franz Planer, to achieve in his films the Expressionist look he had cultivated in his early years at UFA (for "Christmas Holiday," he instructed Bredell in the use of deep-focus photography, which Gregg Toland had perfected for "Citizen Kane"). During Siodmak's tenure, Universal made the most of the noir style in "The Suspect," "The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry" and "The Dark Mirror," but the capstone was "The Killers" in 1946, Burt Lancaster's film debut and Ava Gardner's first dramatic, featured role. A critical and financial success, it earned Siodmak his only Oscar nomination for direction in Hollywood (his German production "The Devil Strikes at Night" ("Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam"), based on the true story of serial killer Bruno Lüdke, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1957). While still under contract at Universal, Siodmak worked on loan out to RKO for the thriller "The Spiral Staircase," which he edited freely, without taking screen credit. For 20th Century Fox and producer Darryl F. Zanuck, he directed, partly on location in New York City, the crime noir "Cry of the City" in 1948, and in 1949 for MGM he tackled its lux production "The Great Sinner," but the prolix script proved unmanageable for Siodmak who relinquished direction to the dependable and bland Mervyn LeRoy. On loan out to Paramount in 1949, he made for producer Hal B. Wallis his penultimate American noir "The File on Thelma Jordan," with Barbara Stanwyck at her most fatal--and sympathetic. That she can be both is owed entirely to Siodmak who saw in this film a thematic link with "The Suspect" and "The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry," with the failed lovers of these films and significantly their tragic conclusions (ten years later he addressed the same theme in "The Rough and the Smooth"). Perhaps his finest American noir--although not his last--is "Criss Cross" that was to reunite him not only with Lancaster, but also "The Killers" producer Mark Hellinger, who died suddenly before production began in 1949. Working without the hands-on control of Hellinger again, Siodmak was able to make this film his own as he could not the earlier film. Yvonne De Carlo's working-class femme fatal (a high mark in her career) completes the deadly triangle, along with Lancaster and Dan Duryea: the archetype of doomed attraction central to all Siodmak's noirs, but the one he could fully express to its nihilistic conclusion.

Siodmak immersed himself in the creative process and genuinely loved working with actors; in fact, he was considered an actor's director, discovering Burt Lancaster, Ernest Borgnine, Tony Curtis, Debra Paget, Maria Schell, Mario Adorf, and skillfully directing actresses, such as Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Dorothy McGuire, Yvonne de Carlo, Barbara Stanwyck, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Ella Raines.[1]

He directed Charles Laughton (a close friend) and George Sanders, actors with indelible personas, and got from both perhaps the unlikeliest, most natural and under-played performances of their careers. He managed with Lancaster to capture a youthful vulnerability--despite the actor's age (he was 33)--that, watching him in "The Killers," surprises us even today. He accomplished the impossible and got a believable, dramatic performance from Gene Kelly who never before or since looked so (intentionally) frightening on screen. But above all, it must be acknowledged, he made audiences sit up and notice Ava Gardner and her potential to ruin men.

Before leaving Hollywood for Europe in 1952, following the problematic production "The Crimson Pirate" for Warner Bros. and producer Harold Hecht, his third and last film with Burt Lancaster (Siodmak dubbed the chaotic experience "The Hecht Follies"), Siodmak had directed some of the era's best films noirs (twelve in all), more than any other director who worked in that style. However, his identification with film noir, generally unpopular with American audiences, may have been more of a curse than a blessing.

He often expressed his desire to make pictures "of a different type and background" than the ones he had been making for ten years. Nevertheless, he ended his Universal contract with one last noir, the disappointing "Deported" (1951) which he filmed partly abroad (Siodmak was among the first refugee directors to return to Europe after making American films). The story is loosely based on the deportation of gangster Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Siodmak had hoped Loretta Young would star, but settled for the Swedish actress Marta Toren.

Those "different type" of films he had made--"The Great Sinner" (1949) for MGM, "Time Out of Mind" (1947) for Universal (which Siodmak also produced), "The Whistle at Eaton Falls" (1951) for Columbia Pictures (Ernest Borgnine's debut and Dorothy Gish's return to the screen)--all proved ill-suited to his noir sensibilities (although in 1952 "The Crimson Pirate," despite the difficult production, was a surprising and pleasing departure--in fact, Lancaster believed it was inspiration for the tongue-in-cheek style of the James Bond films).

The five months he collaborated with Budd Schulberg on a screenplay tentatively titled "A Stone in the River Hudson," an early version of "On the Waterfront," was also a major disappointment for Siodmak. In 1954 he sued producer Sam Spiegel for copyright infringement. Siodmak was awarded $100,000, but no screen credit. His contribution to the original screenplay has never been acknowledged.

Siodmak's return to Europe in 1954 with a Grand Prize nomination at the Cannes Film Festival for his remake of Jacques Feyder's "Le grand jeu" proved a misstep, despite its stars, Gina Lollobrigida (two of them) and Arletty in the role originated by Françoise Rosay, Feyder's wife. In 1955, Siodmak returned to the Federal Republic of Germany to make "Die Ratten," with Maria Schell and Curd Jurgens, winning the Golden Berlin Bear at the 1955 Berlin Film Festival. It was the first in a series of films critical of his homeland, during and after Hitler, which included the remarkable "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam," both thriller and social artifact of Germany under Nazi rule, shot in documentary style reminiscent of "Menschen am Sontag" and "Whistle at Eaton Falls," and in 1960, "Mein Schulfreund," an absurdist comedy, dark and strange, with Heinz Ruhmann as a postal worker attempting to reunite with childhood friend Hermann Goering. Between these films, and "Mein Vater, der Schauspieler" in 1956, with O. W. Fischer (the German Rock Hudson), he took a detour into Douglas Sirk territory with the sordid melodrama, "Dorothea Angermann" in 1959, featuring Germany's star Ruth Leuwerik. Later the same year he left Germany for Great Britain to film "The Rough and the Smooth," with Nadja Tiller and Tony Britton, yet another noir, but much meaner and gloomier than anything he had made in America (compare its downbeat ending with that of "The File on Thelma Jordan"). He followed with "Katia" also in 1959, a tale of Czarist Russia, with twenty-one-year-old Romy Schneider, mistakenly titled in America "The Magnificent Sinner," recalling--unfavorably--Siodmak's other costume melodrama. In 1961, "L'affaire Nina B," with Pierre Brasseur and Nadja Tiller (again), returned Siodmak to familiar ground in a slick, black-and-white thriller about a pay-for-hire Nazi hunter, which could be argued was the start of the many spy themed films so popular in the 1960s. In 1962, the entertaining "Escape from East Berlin," with Don Murray and Christine Kaufman, had all the characteristic style of a Siodmak thriller, but was one that he later dismissed as something he had made for "little kids in America." His work in Germany returned to programmers like those that had begun his career in Hollywood 23 years earlier. From 1964-1965, he made a series of films with former Tarzan Lex Barker: "Der Schut," "Der Schatz der Azteken," and "Die Pyramide des Sonnengottes," all taken from the western, adventure novels of Karl May and made for little kids in both Germany and America.

His return to Hollywood film-making in 1967 to make the wide-screen western "Custer of the West" was another disappointment (it had been a project originally intended for Akira Kurosawa). With Robert Shaw in the title role and his wife Mary Ure as Mrs. Custer, it is the oddest of the Custer film biographies, yet interesting in its contemporary portrayal of Custer's anti-social individualism.

He ended his career with a six-hour, two-part toga and chariot epic, "Kampf um Rom" (1968), a more campy work (perhaps intentionally) than "Cobra Woman" had been. There was a brief and profitable foray into television in Great Britain with the series "O.S.S." (1957-58). Siodmak was last seen publicly in an interview for Swiss television at his home in Ascona in 1971. He died alone in 1973 in Locarno, seven weeks after his wife's death.

The British Film Institute ran a retrospective of his career in April and May of 2015.

The great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 was a tragedy for Mervyn LeRoy. While he and his father managed to survive, they lost everything they had. To make money, LeRoy sold newspapers and entered talent contests as a singer. When he entered vaudeville, his act was "LeRoy and Cooper--Two Kids and a Piano". After the act broke up he contacted his cousin, Jesse L. Lasky, and went to work in Hollywood. He worked in the costume department, the film lab and as a camera assistant before becoming a comedy gag writer and part-time actor in silent films. His next step was as a director, and his first effort was No Place to Go (1927). He scored an unqualified hit with Harold Teen (1928). Earning $1,000 per week by the end of that year, he was nicknamed "The Boy Wonder" of Warner Bros., where his pictures were profitable lightweights. His motto, to paraphrase William Shakespeare, was "Good stories make good movies." LeRoy rounded out the decade assigned to more lightweights, such as Naughty Baby (1928) (his first talkie), Hot Stuff (1929), Little Johnny Jones (1929) and a primitive but rather inventive musical talkie, Broadway Babies (1929), all of which proved that he was equally adept at constructing a musical as any other genre he worked in.

In the depths of the Depression there was considerable disagreement within the studio on whether audiences wanted escapism or stories addressing issues pertaining to the stark realities of the day. LeRoy sided with studio exec Darryl F. Zanuck's tilt toward realism and threw himself into his next assignment--Little Caesar (1931). This smash hit started the gangster craze and LeRoy gained a reputation as a top dramatic director (although his follow-up assignment was Show Girl in Hollywood (1930)). During the 1930s several of his films dealt with social issues, usually through the eyes of the underdog, the best example of that being I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). However, as one of Warner's war horses in its stable of contract directors, he was also assigned more digestible fare. He followed his landmark gangster picture with Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), although it could be argued that it also contained a remarkable degree of social consciousness. Upon the death of Irving Thalberg LeRoy was picked as head of production at MGM. He produced (and partly directed, without credit) that studio's classic The Wizard of Oz (1939), although it was not a classic at the box office when first released. Its poor reception convinced LeRoy to quit producing pictures and go back to directing them. He always had a good relationship with actors and had discovered a number of people who would go on to become major stars, such as Clark Gable (who was rejected for a role in "Little Caesar" by Jack L. Warner over LeRoy's objections), Loretta Young, Robert Mitchum and Lana Turner.

LeRoy turned out numerous hits for MGM in the 1940s, such as Johnny Eager (1941), Random Harvest (1942) and one of the best patriotic films of the period, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). He spent a year at RKO at the end of the war as a producer and director, but quickly returned to MGM, where he remained until 1954. The collapse of the studio system in the 1950s required him to re-assume a producer's role; along with other Hollywood players of the day, he formed his own production company, which set up camp at Warner Bros., and he produced and directed a number of films for that studio based on successful stage plays. LeRoy had a reputation for taking on different types of films, and he seldom did the same type of picture twice, turning out comedies, dramas, fantasies and musicals. His output declined in the 1960s and he took a working retirement in 1965, disgruntled at the direction the film industry had taken. He was sorely tempted to tackle Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes (1968), but declined, deciding that the requirement to put up his own money was too risky for a man in his mid-60s. His last directorial effort was assisting old friend John Wayne for certain scenes in The Green Berets (1968). He took a figurehead position at Mego International in the 1970s and talked of producing westerns, but nothing came of it. However, as talented and successful as LeRoy was as a director over his long career, and considering the number of classic films he was responsible for, the one thing he never managed to successfully get was an Oscar for Best Director. The man who joked he never made a total flop died in 1987.