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Famed actor, composer, artist, author and director. His talents extended to the authoring of the novel "Mr. Cartonwine: A Moral Tale" as well as his autobiography. In 1944, he joined ASCAP, and composed "Russian Dances", "Partita", "Ballet Viennois", "The Woodman and the Elves", "Behind the Horizon", "Fugue Fantasia", "In Memorium", "Hallowe'en", "Preludium & Fugue", "Elegie for Oboe, Orch.", "Farewell Symphony (1-act opera)", "Elegie (piano pieces)", "Rondo for Piano" and "Scherzo Grotesque".

The daughter of actor-manager Samuel Rupert Woods and actress Lillie Roberts, Ethel Griffies began her own stage career at the age of 3. She was 21 when she finally made her London debut in 1899, and 46 when she made her first Broadway appearance in "Havoc" (1924). Discounting a tentative stab at filmmaking in 1917, she made her movie bow in 1930, repeating her stage role in Old English (1930). Habitually cast as a crotchety old lady with the proverbial golden heart, she alternated between bits and prominently featured roles for the next 35 years. Her larger parts included Grace Poole in both the 1934 (Jane Eyre (1934)) and 1943 (Jane Eyre (1943)) versions of "Jane Eyre" and "Mrs. Bundy", the amateur ornithologist in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). Every so often she'd take a sabbatical from film work to concentrate on the stage; she made her last Broadway appearance in 1967, at which time she was England's oldest working actress. Presumably at the invitation of fellow Briton Arthur Treacher, Ethel was a frequent guest on TV's The Merv Griffin Show (1962), never failing to bring down the house with her wickedly witty comments on her 80 years in show business.

Born in New York City to a Judge of Special Sessions who was also president of a sewing machine company. Grew up on City Island, New York. Attended Hamilton Military Academy and turned down an appointment to West Point to attend New York Law School, where his law school classmates included future New York City mayor James J. Walker. After a boating accident which led to pneumonia, Carey wrote a play while recuperating and toured the country in it for three years, earning a great deal of money, all of which evaporated after his next play was a failure. In 1911, his friend Henry B. Walthall introduced him to director D.W. Griffith, for whom Carey was to make many films. Carey married twice, the second time to actress Olive Fuller Golden (aka Olive Carey, who introduced him to future director John Ford. Carey influenced Universal Studios head Carl Laemmle to use Ford as a director, and a partnership was born that lasted until a rift in the friendship in 1921. During this time, Carey grew into one of the most popular Western stars of the early motion picture, occasionally writing and directing films as well. In the '30s he moved slowly into character roles and was nominated for an Oscar for one of them, the President of the Senate in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). He worked once more with Ford, in The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), and appeared once with his son, Harry Carey Jr., in Howard Hawks's Red River (1948). He died after a protracted bout with emphysema and cancer. Ford dedicated his remake of 3 Godfathers (1948) "To Harry Carey--Bright Star Of The Early Western Sky."

Scottish-born Finlay Currie was a former church organist and choirmaster, who made his stage debut at 20 years of age. It took him 34 more years before making his first film, but he worked steadily for another 30 years after that. Although he was a large, imposing figure, with a rich, deep voice and somewhat authoritarian demeanor, he was seldom cast in villainous parts. He received great acclaim for his role as Magwitch in Great Expectations (1946), and one of his best remembered roles was that of Balthazar in Ben-Hur (1959). He was also Shunderson, Cary Grant's devoted servant with a secret past in People Will Talk (1951). Later in his life he became a much respected antiques dealer, specializing in coins and precious metals (coinage). He died in England at age 90. While his biggest Academy Award-winning film, Ben-Hur (1959) was in its final four+ months of filming, he became a widower when his only wife, Maude Courtney, passed away.

A prominent matinée stage and silent-film star with handsome features offset only slightly by a prominent proboscis, Robert Warwick was born and raised in Sacramento, California, as Robert Taylor Bien. The gift of music was instilled at an early age (he sang in his church choir) and he initially prepared for an operatic career. Studying vocally in Paris, he abandoned legit singing for acting after being hired in 1903 to understudy in the Broadway play "Glad of It". He grew quickly in stature in such popular stage roles as "Vronsky" in "Anna Karenina" (1907), and was a strong presence in the musical operettas "The Kiss Waltz" (1911) and "The Princess" (1912), the latter featuring his first wife, actress Josephine Whittell.

With effortless charm, Warwick segued into romantic film roles, playing dashing leads in Alias Jimmy Valentine (1915), The Face in the Moonlight (1915), The Heart of a Hero (1916)--in which he portrayed Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale--The Mad Lover (1917) and A Girl's Folly (1917). At one point he even formed his own production company, Robert Warwick Film Corp. The company produced four films before Warwick temporarily left Hollywood in 1917 to serve in WWI as an infantry captain.

In the 1920s he shifted between Broadway and film leads. His well-modulated voice proved ideal for sound pictures, and he subsequently enjoyed a long career (over 200 films) in grand, authoritative character parts. Among his plethora of movie roles were "Neptune" in Night Life of the Gods (1935), "Col. Gray" in Shirley Temple's The Little Colonel (1935), "Sir Francis Knolly" in Mary of Scotland (1936) and "Lord Montague" in the Norma Shearer/Leslie Howard starrer Romeo and Juliet (1936). He also was seen to fine advantage in several of Errol Flynn's rousing costumers such as The Prince and the Pauper (1937), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), and The Sea Hawk (1940). A grand, stately gent, he was often seen impersonating high-ranking military officers, dapper businessmen or stern but benevolent father figure types. The legendary Preston Sturges utilized his services, giving him small roles in The Great McGinty (1940), Christmas in July (1940) and The Lady Eve (1941) before handing him a standout part as an avuncular studio mogul in Sullivan's Travels (1941).

For the most part, however, Warwick was humbled into playing smaller, serviceable roles in adventures and crime dramas, with many of these characters embracing unyielding traditionalist values. Other exceptions to this rule were his hammy, downtrodden Hollywood actor "Charlie Waterman" in In a Lonely Place (1950) and his dying tycoon in While the City Sleeps (1956). Warwick continued performing well into his 80s. Primarily on TV in his twilight years, he could be spotted frequently on such programs as The Twilight Zone (1959), Maverick (1957) and Dr. Kildare (1961). Divorced from his first wife, he survived his second, actress Stella Lattimore (1905-1960), before dying in 1964 following an extended illness. He had one daughter by his first wife; Rosalind, who bore him two grandchildren, and with his second wife another daughter, Betsey, who was a prominent published poet in Los Angeles and was buried next to her father at Holy Cross Cemetary in Los Angeles in 2007.

Henry B. Walthall was a respected stage actor who became a favorite of pioneering film director D.W. Griffith. Born in 1878 in Alabama, Walthall was initially interested in pursuing a law career but he quit law school in 1898 to enlist in the US Army in order to fight in the Spanish-American War. Returning from the war he decided to take up an acting career instead of continuing with his education in law, so he traveled to New York City hoping to make his mark on Broadway. He debuted on the Great White Way in 1901. His friend and fellow actor James Kirkwood introduced him to Griffith, who was also a southerner and who already knew of Walthall's reputation as a stage actor. He hired Walthall to appear in his A Convict's Sacrifice (1909), the first of many films they would make together.

Shortly afterward Walthall left Biograph and Griffith for Balboa Pictures in Long Beach, CA. In 1917 he and his wife formed their own production company, but after a few films he went back to work for Griffith at Biograph. However, his career went on a downward spiral, and by the 1920s he was appearing in mostly low-budget "B" fare, with only a few side journeys into more quality "A" pictures--Tod Browning's London After Midnight (1927) among them.

The sound period rejuvenated Walthall's career somewhat. He had a distinguished bearing and his voice, unlike those of many bigger silent-screen stars, was perfectly acceptable for talkies. He appeared in such productions as John Ford's Judge Priest (1934) and Browning's The Devil-Doll (1936). He was hired by director Frank Capra to play the High Lama in Capra's production of Lost Horizon (1937), but before the film began production he died of influenza, on June 7, 1936.

One Hollywood stalwart whose screen incarnations more than lived up to his name was bald-domed character actor Donald Meek, forever typecast as mousy, timorous or browbeaten Casper Milquetoasts. He stood at 5 ft. 6 in. in his boots and weighed a mere 81 pounds. However, the little Glaswegian's personal history rather belied his gormless image on the silver screen. By the age of fourteen, Donald had joined an acrobatic team ("The Marvells") on the piano wire as a top mounter. He accompanied the troupe on their tour of the U.S. but sustained several compound fractures in a fall and had to quit. After spending six months on crutches, he joined the U.S. 6th Pennsylvania Regiment and saw action during the Spanish-American War in Cuba, was wounded and lost his hair after a bout of yellow fever. This did not deter him from re-enlisting at the onset of World War I. He went on to serve with the Canadian Highlanders as a corporal, but, to his consternation, never got any further than Toronto.

Donald had been infatuated with acting since early childhood. At the age of eight, he first performed publicly in the comic pantomime "Le Voyage en Suisse". Later, he toured Australia, South Africa, India and England in "Little Lord Fauntleroy". During his wartime sojourn in Cuba he had learned to "listen to those Yankees" and imitated their manner of speech, losing his Scottish accent in the process. When he was forced to abandon his career as an acrobat, he devoted more time to acting with various traveling stock companies and in New York. He made the first (of many) appearances on Broadway in 1903. Until the late 1920s, Donald remained quite gainfully employed in droll comical roles. Having flirted with screen acting since 1923, he made the move to the celluloid media by the end of the decade. Filmed at the Warner Brothers Eastern Vitaphone Studio in Brooklyn, he found himself an unlikely star, as amateur sleuth Dr. Amos Crabtree in The Clyde Mystery (1931), the first of eleven detective two-reelers, averaging just over twenty minutes in length. In 1933, Donald and wife Belle relocated to Hollywood.

Moving from studio to studio (his only long-tern tenure was at MGM from 1940 to 1944), Donald Meek quickly emerged as one of the most prolific, sought-after character players in the business. Invariably, he was respectability personified, all prim and proper. The role of eccentric toy maker Mr. Poppins in You Can't Take It with You (1938) was specially written for him. Other memorable performances included the nervy little whiskey salesman Samuel Peacock, losing his samples to Thomas Mitchell in Stagecoach (1939) ("the cutest coach rider in the wagon", according to a New York Times review); shady gambler Amos Budge in My Little Chickadee (1940); Mr. Wiggs thinking himself to sleep in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934); the eccentric little bee-keeper Bartholomew, helping the crime fighting exploits of Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939); and the intoxicated food taster and mince-meat enthusiast Hippenstahl of State Fair (1945). On odd occasions, Donald managed to step out of character, notably as the courageous Scottish prospector McTavish standing up to the villains of Barbary Coast (1935); scene-stealing, as miserly financier Daniel Drew in The Toast of New York (1937); as a rather loony citizen determined to collect a reward by unmasking Edward G. Robinson in The Whole Town's Talking (1935); or as tough railroad executive McCoy in Jesse James (1939) and The Return of Frank James (1940).

Donald Meek crammed more than 120 screen roles into a mere one and a half decades. His performances were consistently a joy to watch. He was never able to realise his ambition of retiring to raise hybrid roses, dying in November 1946 at the age of 68. Fourteen years later, he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Boston-born Franklyn Farnum was on the vaudeville stage at the age of 12 and was featured in a number of theatre and musical productions by the time he entered silent films near the age of 40. He appeared to be at his most comfortable in the saddle, his career dominated mostly by westerns. Some of his more famous films include the serial Vanishing Trails (1920) and features The Clock (1917), The Firebrand (1922), The Drug Store Cowboy (1925) and The Gambling Fool (1925). In 1925 he left films, but returned five years later at the advent of sound, only to find himself billed much further down the credits, if at all. He continued on, however, in these obscure roles well into the 1950s. Largely forgotten today, he is not related to silent actors and brothers Dustin Farnum and William Farnum. One of his three wives was the ill-fated Alma Rubens, to whom he was briefly married in 1918. Farnum passed away from cancer in 1961.

Taylor Holmes, the American stage and film actor, was born in Newark, New Jersey. He made his Broadway debut in February 1900 in the controversial play "Sapho", which was closed down by the New York Police Department for immorality after 29 performances. In the April 1900 trial, the play was adjudged not obscene, and it reopened and ran for an additional 55 performances.

Holmes would go on to appear in 36 other Broadway productions over the next 46 years. From 1917 through 1959, he appeared in scores of films and television shows, being employed mainly by TV in the 1950s.

Taylor Holmes was married to the actress Edna Phillips. They were the parents of the actors Phillips Holmes and Ralph Holmes and of a daughter, Madeleine. His wife and two sons died before he finally shuffled off this mortal coil on September 30, 1959, at the age of 81. He was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

American leading man and character actor of the silent period. Born in Crystal City, Missouri(though a number of popular reference works list Switzerland and Kokomo, Indiana). He is listed in the 1880 census as living in Kokomo at the age of two years. This means his date of birth must have been 1878. His father, Paul Santschi was born in Sigriswill, Switzerland and came to the U.S. as a child. Tom Santschi promoted the myth that he was born in Switzerland since it seemed much more exciting than being born in Crystal City or Kokomo. After performing as an amateur actor, he made his professional stage debut at age 19, and worked for the next decade in the theatre. He landed a small role in a film produced by Selig Polyscope, and over the next few years rose from bit player to leading man. He directed and wrote a few of his films. Following the First World War, he became more frequently seen in supporting roles, often as villains. He worked consistently until his death in 1931.

In a career that covered six decades, Constance Collier evolved into one of Broadway and London's finest tragediennes during the first half of the 1900s. While the regal, dark-featured beauty who bore classic Romanesque features enjoyed a transcontinental career like a number of her contemporaries, her theatre success did not encourage an enviable film career. It wasn't until her senior years that Constance engaged in a number of well-regarded supporting performances on screen. Later respect also came as one of Hollywood's premiere drama and voice coaches.

She was born Laura Constance Hardie in Windsor, Berkshire on January 22, 1878, the only child of Auguste Cheetham and Eliza Georgina (Collier) Hardie, both minor professional actors. Young Constance made her stage debut at the age of three as a fairy in a production of "A Midsummer Nights Dream" and the die was cast. By age 6 she was appearing with famed actor/manager Wilson Barrett in "The Silver King". An early break occurred in her teens (1893) when the tall, under-aged beauty was given consent by her parents to become a member of the famed George Edwardes-Hall "Gaiety Girls" dance troupe. Groomed extensively in singing, dancing and elocution, she managed to stand out among those others in the chorus line and went on to featured status in two of Edwardes-Hall's biggest hits, "A Gaiety Girl" and "The Shop Girl" (both 1894).

Legit ingénue roles in "Her Advocate", "Tommy Atkins" and "The Sign of the Cross" followed. Just after the turn of the century (1901) she was invited to join the theatre company of the esteemed Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who had been searching for a comparably tall leading lady to play opposite him. She remained with his company at His Majesty's Theatre for six years where she built up a formidable classical resumé. Alongside Sir Herbert in such plays as "Ulysses", "The Eternal City" and "Nero", Constance also proved a fine Shakespearean with her Olivia, Viola, Portia, Mistress Ford and Cleopatra at the top of the list. She also made a noteworthy Nancy Sykes in "Oliver Twist" which she toured extensively both here and abroad. During this time (1905), she married British-born actor Julian L'Estrange and together they became an internationally respected stage couple.

Ms. Collier made a successful American stage debut in 1908 with "Samson" at the Garrick Theatre in New York opposite well-known American actor/playwright William Gillette, thereby placing herself solidly among the most popular and respected actresses of the day. Among her subsequent Broadway offerings were "Israel" (1909), "Trelawney of the Wells" (1911), "Oliver Twist" (1912), "Othello" (1915) and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (1917).

Sir Herbert and Constance both appeared as extras in the silent D.W. Griffith classic Intolerance (1916). While still in the U.S., he filmed Macbeth (1916) with Constance as his Lady Macbeth. Not only was the Shakespearean film poorly received but her starring appearances in two other silents released earlier that year, The Tongues of Men (1916) and The Code of Marcia Gray (1916), were also overlooked.

Tragedy struck in October of 1918. She and her husband, L'Estrange, had begun a Broadway run together of "The Ideal Husband" only a month earlier. During the run he contracted the deadly Spanish influenza which had spread worldwide and died of pneumonia at the untimely age of 40. The grief-stricken actress finished the play's run into November then returned to England where she appeared in the films The Impossible Woman (1919), Bleak House (1920) and The Bohemian Girl (1922). Among her London theatre successes were "Our Betters" (1923) at the Globe Theatre, which ran for over twelve months, and "Hamlet" wherein she played Queen Gertrude opposite John Barrymore's Great Dane (1925) at the Haymarket Theatre. Constance also moved into writing and penned her own play "Forever", which was based on the George L. Du Maurier novel "Peter Ibbetson". She then co-wrote with actor/friend Ivor Novello the play "The Rat" (1924), in which Novello starred and which Collier produced.

The advent of sound provided the exciting opportunity for the eloquent Collier to work in the U.S., but not necessarily as an actress. By helping established silent film stars transition into talkies, she became Hollywood's foremost drama and voice coach. Finding less and less time for stage work, she directed a Broadway production of "Camille" in 1931. She did, however, manage to appear in productions of "Peter Ibbetson" (1931), which she also staged, "Dinner at Eight (1932) and "Hay Fever" (1933) all in New York. Her final Broadway curtain call was taken as Madame Bernardi in "Aries Is Rising" (1939) at New York's Golden Theatre.

In later years, she continued to coach (among her students were Marilyn Monroe) and write, but she also found time to return to the large screen in a dozen or so films, usually providing stately support. She appeared in a range of movies from the Shirley Temple vehicle Wee Willie Winkie (1937) to the film noir piece The Dark Corner (1946). Better known roles during this period include those in Stage Door (1937), playing, quite appropriately and amusingly, the resident drama coach, An Ideal Husband (1947), excellent as Lady Markby, and Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948). Her last film was Whirlpool (1950).

Constance Collier died of natural causes in New York on April 25, 1955, and left behind her 1929 memoirs "Harlequinade". She had no children.

Bill Robinson quit school at age seven and began work as a professional dancer the following year. Bojangles (the name referred to his happy-go-lucky ebullience) starred in vaudeville, musical stage and movies. He invented the stair tap routine and was considered one of the world's greatest tap dancers. His film debut was in Dixiana (1930). He worked in fifteen movies, but his movie fame came primarily from the films he made with Shirley Temple -- The Little Colonel (1935), The Littlest Rebel (1935), and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938). In 1989 the US Congress named his birth date as National Tap Dancing Day.

Basil Ruysdael was born on 24 July 1878 in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for Pinky (1949), Broken Arrow (1950) and Colorado Territory (1949). He was married to Kathleen Dobbyn, Rose Swettenham and Eleanor Mason Manierre. He died on 10 October 1960 in Hollywood, California, USA.

Born in the upstate New York town of Horseheads in 1878, William Desmond began his show business career in vaudeville and on the stage. He had his own theatrical company by the time he made his film debut in Kilmeny (1915). Starting out in dramatic parts, Desmond soon switched to westerns and action serials, and became a major western star. When the sound era began Desmond was almost 50 years old, and was soon relegated to supporting roles. He continued making films into the 1940s.

British character actress, on stage from 1894. Her many notable theatrical appearances include "Little Lord Fauntleroy" at the Prince's Theatre in Bristol, and, as Lady McClean, in "Escape Me Never" at the Apollo in London (1933) - a part she subsequently took to Broadway two years later. Until well into her seventies, Katie's screen career consisted almost exclusively of smallish parts, until she was cast as sweet, frail Mrs. Wilberforce in the classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (1955). A most quintessentially British role, it finds her in a crumbling boarding house with dodgy plumbing, surrounded by Victorian memorabilia, a parrot named General Gordon, and an assortment of genteel, but pixillated, old friends. Her innocence and moral fortitude ultimately precipitate the downfall of a gang of bank robbers, posing as a string quartet.

This was the defining role of Katie's career and it won her the 1955 BAFTA Award as Best Actress. She had another juicy role, as eavesdropping would-be sleuth Aunt Alice, in How to Murder a Rich Uncle (1957). Sadly, there was to be no more from this delightful scene stealer, as she passed away shortly after, at the age of 78.

Francisco "Pancho" Villa was born Doroteo Arango to rural peasant parents in San Juan del Rio, Mexico, on June 5, 1878. He later took several aliases, the most popular and well-known being "Pancho Villa". Raised in poverty in Durango, he turned to cattle rustling and robbery as a young man. The turning point in his life, however, was the day his sister was attacked and raped by Mexican army troops. Villa wanted revenge against the whole world and soon turned from being simply a bandit leader into a full-fledged revolutionary with the aim of overthrowing Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz. To that end Villa became an ally of another revolutionary, the urbane and educated Francisco I. Madero, and although the two were about as opposite from one another as it was possible to be, Villa soon became a diehard supporter of the diminutive Madero, whom he affectionately called "the little man". Madero appointed Villa a colonel in the revolutionary army. On May 11, 1911, Villa led a daring raid against the federal stronghold of Juarez, soundly defeating the government forces and securing Madero's position as the new president. After Diaz was driven from power and Madero installed as president, Villa went home. His stay there was not to be very long, however. Two years later Madero was overthrown and executed by renegade Gen. Victoriano Huerta. Enraged, Villa re-formed his army, now called the Army of the North, and became an important member of a coalition of anti-Huerta forces, among whom were such legendary Mexican figures as Emiliano Zapata and Venustiano Carranza.

Villa's mounted troops, called "Villistas", were highly mobile and seasoned by years of fighting against the Diaz regime. They inflicted a decisive defeat on Huerta's army in northern Mexico at the Battle of Zacatecas on June 23, 1913, then began a campaign to drive Huerta's forces south to their stronghold of Mexico City. By December, in conjunction with the armies of Carranza and Zapata, Villa captured Mexico City, forcing Huerta to flee and placing control of the government in the hands of the three rebel leaders. However, the following spring Villa was forced out of the triumvirate when he lost a power struggle with Carranza. In the ensuing conflict his troops were badly defeated by Carranza's army and Villa was forced to withdraw to his headquarters in Durango. There he resumed his life as a bandit, raiding isolated American border towns and mining camps as well as Mexican villages.

On March 9, 1916, troops under Villa's command raided the town of Columbus, New Mexico, looted it, burned down much of it and caused the deaths of more than a dozen residents, although about 30 of their own men were killed by American soldiers and civilians defending the town (supposedly Villa was angered by the U.S. authorities allowing elements of Carranza's army, which was pursuing him, to cross through American territory as a shortcut in an attempt to get ahead of Villa and ambush him, and the raid was in retaliation for that). The U.S. government sent an expeditionary force into Mexico under Gen. John J. Pershing to capture Villa. However, Villa's maneuverability and superior knowledge of the terrain enabled him to elude the pursuing American troops, and Pershing's forces withdrew from the area the following year.

In 1920 the Carranza government struck a deal with Villa in which he agreed to halt his raids in exchange for settling down on a ranch in Canutillo and being appointed a general in the Mexican army. However, on June 20, 1923, Villa was ambushed and murdered in Parral by followers of Álvaro Obregón, a former army general, who feared that Villa would oppose their leader's candidacy for president in the upcoming elections. Immediately following his death the name of Pancho Villa was eliminated from all history books, children's books and all monuments in Mexico. It wasn't until 1975 (more than a half-century after his death) that both the Mexican and American governments felt safe enough to exhume his body, and when they did, they discovered that someone had stolen his head. After a large parade was held in his honor in Mexico, Pancho Villa's body was sent to the cemetery where many Mexican revolutionary heroes were buried, and he was finally given the proper burial he deserved.

Porter Strong was born on 27 December 1878 in St. Joseph, Missouri, USA. He was an actor, known for Way Down East (1920), Dream Street (1921) and A Romance of Happy Valley (1919). He died on 11 June 1923 in New York City, New York, USA.

Bobby Burns was born on 1 September 1878 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Ups and Downs (1915), Frenzied Finance (1916) and Mixed and Fixed (1915). He died on 16 January 1966 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Harry Bernard was born on 13 January 1878 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The Shadow (1937), Saps at Sea (1940) and The Rogue Song (1930). He died on 4 November 1940 in Hollywood, California, USA.

Joseph Stalin (a code name meaning "Man of Steel") was born Iosif (Joseph) Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in 1878 in Gori, Georgia, the Transcaucasian part of the Russian Empire. His father was a cobbler named Vissarion Dzhugashvili, a drunkard who beat him badly and frequently and left the family when Joseph was young. His mother, Ekaterina Gheladze, supported herself and her son (her other three children died young and Jopseph was effectively an only child) by taking in washing. She managed, despite great hardship, to send Joseph to school and then on to Tiflis Orthodox Theological Seminary in Tbilisi, hoping he would become a priest. However, after three years of studies he was expelled in 1899, for not attending an exam and for propagating communist ideas and the books of Karl Marx.

Since 1898, Stalin became active in the Communist underground as the organizer of a powerful gang involved in a series of armed robberies. After robbing several banks in southern Russia, Stalin delivered the stolen money to Vladimir Lenin to finance the Communist Party. Stalin's gang was also involved in the murders of its political opponents; Stalin himself was arrested seven times, repeatedly imprisoned, and twice exiled to Siberia between 1902 and 1913. During those years he changed his name twice and became more closely identified with revolutionary Marxism. He escaped many times from prison and was shuttling money between Lenin and other communists in hiding, where his intimacy with Lenin and Bukharin grew, as did his dissatisfaction with fellow Communist leader Lev Trotskiy. In 1912 he was co-opted on to the illegal Communist Central Committee. At that time he wrote propaganda articles, and later edited the Communist paper, "Pravda" (Truth). As Lenin's apprentice he joined the Communist majority (Bolsheviks), and was responsible for the consolidation of several secret communist cells into a larger ring. Stalin's Communist ring in St. Petersburg and across Russia played the leading role in the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the revolution the Bolsheviks Communists grabbed the power, then Communists murdered the Tsar and the Russian royal family. Stalin and Lenin took over the Tsar's palaces and used the main one in Kremlin as their private residence.

Lenin appointed Stalin the People's Commissar for Nationalities in the first Soviet government and a member of the Communist Politburo, thus giving him unlimited power. Stalin led the "Reds" against anti-Communist forces known as the "Whites" and also in the war with Poland. He also organized "Red Terror" in Tsaritsin (later renamed Stalingrad). With his appointment as General Secretary to the Party Central Committee in 1922, a post he held for the next 30 years, until his death, he consolidated the power that would ensure his control of the country after Lenin's death in 1924. He also took, or gave himself, other key positions that enabled him to amass total power in the Party and Soviet government.

Stalin was known for his piercing eyes and terrifying stare, which he used to cow his opponents into submission during private discussions. In 1927 Stalin requested medical help for his insomnia, anger and severe anxiety disorder. His doctors diagnosed him as having "typical clinical paranoia" and recommended medical treatment. Instead, Stalin became angry and summoned his secret service agents. The next day the chief psychiatrist, Dr. Bekhterev, and his assistants died of poisoning. In addition, before the doctors' diagnosis about Stalin's mental condition could become known, he ordered the executions of intellectuals, resulting in the murders of hundreds of thousands of doctors, professors, writers, and others.

Stalin's policy of amassing dictatorial power under the guise of building "socialism in the country" resulted in brutal extermination of all real and perceived anti-Communist opposition. His purges of the Soviet military brought about the execution of tens of thousands of army officers, many of them experienced combat veterans of the Revolution, the Civil War, the Polish campaigns and other military operations (this decimation of the Russian officer corps would result in the Soviet Union's initial defeats at the hands of Nazi invaders at the beginning of World War II). He also isolated and disgraced his political rivals, notably Trotsky. Stalin's economic policies of strict centralized planning (i.e., the "five-year plans") resulted in the near ruination of the Soviet economy and mass famines in many areas of the Soviet Union, notably in Central Russia and the Ukraine. Popular resistance to Stalin's policies, such as nationalization of private lands and collective farming, by independent farmers ("kulaks"), brought about brutal retaliation, in which millions of kulaks were either forced off their land or executed outright. Altogether Stalin's economic and political policies resulted in the deaths of up to 10 million peasants during 1926-1934. Between 1934 and 1939 he organized and led massive purge (known as "The Great Terror") of the party, government, armed forces and intelligentsia, in which millions of so-called "enemies of the Soviet people" were imprisoned, exiled or executed. In the late 1930s, Stalin sent some Red Army forces and material to support the Spanish Republican government in its fight against the rebels led by Gen. Francisco Franco and aided by troops and material from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Stalin made the Non-Aggression Pact with Adolf Hitler in 1939, which bought the Soviet Union two years' respite from involvement in World War 2. After the German invasion in 1941, the USSR became a member of the Grand Alliance and Stalin, as war leader, assumed the title of Generalissimus. He had no formal military training and scorned the advice of his senior officers, due to suspicion and his rising paranoia, actions that resulted in horrific losses to the Russian military in both men and material (not to mention civilian losses). He rejected military plans made by such experienced officers as Marshal Georgi Zhukov, and insisted they be replaced by his own plans, which led to even more horrific losses. Towards the end of WWII he took part in the conferences of Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Clement Attlee. The agreements reached in those conferences resulted in Soviet military and political control over the liberated countries of postwar Castern and Central Europe.

From 1945 until his death Stalin resumed his repressive measures at home, resulting in censorship of the arts, literature and cinema, forced exiles of hundreds of thousands and the executions of intellectuals and other potential "enemies of the state". At that time he conducted foreign policies that contributed to the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West. Stalin had little interest in family life, although he was married twice and had several mistresses. His first wife (Ekaterina Svanidze, married c. 1904) died three years after their marriage and left a son, Jacob (also known as Yacov), an officer in the Russian army during World War II who was captured by the Nazis and died in a POW camp (his father refused German offers to exchange him for captured German officers). His second wife (Nadezhda Alliluyeva, married 1919) attempted to moderate his politics, but she died by suicide, leaving a daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, and an alcoholic son, Vasili Stalin, who later died in exile. Increasingly paranoid, Stalin launched attacks on such intellectuals as Osip Mandelstam, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Anna Akhmatova, Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and many other cultural luminaries. Stalin personally intervened in the fate of "counterrevolutionary" Yiddish writers and changed their sentences from exile to execution. Thirteen of them were executed by the Soviet secret police; their leader, Perets Markish, was executed in the typical KGB manner by a single gunshot to the head on August 12, 1952, in Moscow.

Stalin died suddenly on March 5, 1953, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, after announcing his intention to arrest Jewish doctors, whom he believed were plotting to kill him. The "official" cause of death was announced as brain hemorrhage. Stalin's apprentice, Georgi Malenkov, took the power, but was soon ousted by Nikita Khrushchev. Three years after death, Stalin was posthumously denounced by Nikita Khrushchev at the 20th Party Congress in 1956 for crimes against the Party and for building a "cult of personality." In 1961 Stalin's body was removed from Lenin's Mausoleum, where it had been displayed since his death, and buried near the Kremlin wall. In 1964 Leonid Brezhnev dismissed Khrushchev and brought back some of Stalin's hard-line policies. After 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev initiated a series of liberal political reforms known as "glasnost" and "perstroika", and many of Stalin's victims were posthumously rehabilitated, and the whole phenomenon of "Stalinism" was officially condemned by the Russian authorities.

Julia Swayne Gordon was born on 29 October 1878 in Columbus, Ohio, USA. She was an actress, known for My Lady's Slipper (1916), You Can't Fool Your Wife (1923) and The Painted World (1919). She was married to Hugh Thomas Swayne. She died on 28 May 1933 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

This knowing, plump-framed, strong-willed actress went on to play the gamut of emotions, from downtrodden, drunken ex-stars to self-controlled dowager empresses, in both silent pictures and early talkies. Grandly supporting the huge stars of her day (including Rudolph Valentino and Will Rogers), she actually started out as a celebrated singer from the vaudeville and Broadway stages; films came much later. While she wasn't as extensively captured on celluloid as, say, a Jane Darwell and is less remembered these days, Louise Dresser nevertheless created a daunting gallery of character matrons in her time and earned the respect of Hollywood.

The Hoosier-born and -bred Dresser was born Lulu Josephine Kerlin in Evansville, Indiana, on October 5, 1878, and raised there as the daughter of William and Ida Kerlin, he being a train engineer. She sang as a child and grew up as part of various choirs and shows in town. The family moved to Columbus, Ohio, when she reached her teens (he was killed in a railroad accident not long after their move). With a burning desire to perform professionally, the pretty 16-year-old ran away from home, abandoned her schooling and set her heart on making a career for herself in entertainment. She actively pursued singing roles that could benefit her contralto voice in stock, burlesque and vaudeville. She eventually changed her stage name to Louise Kerlin. During this time she became the lovely singing protégé of Tin Pan Alley composer Paul Dresser (né Paul Dreiser). Known at the time for such songs as "On the Banks of the Wabash" and "Far Away", it was Dresser, the brother of novelist Theodore Dreiser, who changed Louise's marquee name to Louise Dresser, and it was Louise who introduced Paul's biggest song hit to American ears, "My Gal Sal". Her affiliation with Paul helped earn her the billing "The Girl from the Wabash."

While on the vaudeville circuit Louise met and married Jack Norworth, a performing monologist, best known in later years for providing the lyrics to such old-time classics as "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and "Shine On, Harvest Moon." She made her Broadway debut in "About Town" in 1906, which starred her husband, who also provided the songs. By the time Louise settled into the Broadway scene, however, the couple had divorced (after eight years). Noted for her charm and elegance, Louise specialized in light operettas and musical comedy, and year after year increased her marquee value with such New York musical shows as "The Girls of Gottenberg" (1908), "The Candy Shop" (1909), "A Matinee Idol" (1910), and "From Broadway to Paris" (1912).

Louise met Broadway singing star Jack Gardner (1873-1950) along the way. They married in 1908, a year after her divorce from Norworth. The couple went on to headline together in vaudeville but, interestingly, never managed to appear together on the Great White Way. Into the next decade she graced the New York stage with such singing vehicles as George M. Cohan's "Hello, Broadway!" (1914), and in two of Jerome Kern's: "Have a Heart" (1917) and "Rock-a-Bye, Baby" (1918).

Louise and husband Gardner decided to make a daring pitch for film work by moving to California in 1920. She debuted at age 44 with the film The Glory of Clementina (1922); her actor/singer husband, who appeared in the pictures Hollywood (1923) and Bluff (1924), actually found more success as a Fox Films executive. Forsaking her musical career, she now served as a reliable character actress in silents, making indelible impressions as the title character in The Goose Woman (1925) and as Catherine the Great in the Rudolph Valentino classic The Eagle (1925).

Louise, Janet Gaynor and Gloria Swanson were nominated for the very first "Best Actress" Oscar award, Louise for her strong, touching portrayal of a Hungarian immigrant in A Ship Comes In (1928) opposite Joseph Schildkraut. It was Gaynor, however, who earned the distinction of holding up the first trophy (for her work in three roles) while Swanson and Dresser received "Citations of Merit". Other famous ladies of history Louise addressed in films would include Calamity Jane in Caught (1931) and Empress Elizabeth in The Scarlet Empress (1934).

In the early 1930s the actress made a rare return to the stage with the play "A Plain Man and His Wife" in Pasadena, CA. Quite settled by this time in films, she became a familiar presence opposite homespun comedian Will Rogers in such unassuming Rogers vehicles as Lightnin' (1930), State Fair (1933), Doctor Bull (1933), David Harum (1934) and The County Chairman (1935). Rogers' tragic death in a plane accident ended a very warm and lucrative association she had with the beloved humorist. The devastated Dresser made only one film after that, the Claudette Colbert / Fred MacMurray drama Maid of Salem (1937), which recalled the Salem witch trials of the late 1600s.

Louise and husband Gardner retired to their home in Glendale, CA, where she primarily tended to her favorite pastime (gardening), along with taking part in numerous charitable affairs, notably for the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital. Her husband died in 1950 and she followed suit a decade and a half later following surgery for an intestinal blockage on April 24, 1965, in Woodland Hills, CA. She was interred at Forest Lawn Cemetary in Glendale.

He was the man you loved to hiss. This towering (6' 4"), highly imposing character star with cold, hollow, beady eyes and a huge, protruding snout would go on to become one of the silent screen's finest arch villains. Born Ernest Thayson Torrence-Thompson on June 26, 1878, in Edinburgh, Scotland, he was, unlikely enough, an exceptional pianist and operatic baritone. A graduate of the Stuttgart Conservatory, Edinburgh Academy before earning a scholarship at London's Royal Academy of Music, he toured with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in such productions as "The Emerald Isle" (1901) and "The Talk of the Town" (1905) before serious vocal problems set in. Both Ernest and his actor brother David Torrence came to America directly from Scotland prior to WWI. Focusing instead on a purely acting career, both brothers developed into seasoned players on the New York stage. Ernest made his Broadway bow with "Modest Suzanne" in 1912 and a standout role in "The Night Boat" in 1920 brought him to the attention of Hollywood filmmakers.

He earned superb marks playing the despicable adversary Luke Hatburn in Tol'able David (1921) opposite Richard Barthelmess, and immediately settled into films for the rest of his career. Adept at both comedy and drama, Ernest avoided what could have been a damaging stereotype with his sympathetic portrayal of a grizzled old codger in the classic western The Covered Wagon (1923). He further bolstered his celebrity with plum, lip-smacking roles alongside Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) as Clopin, king of the beggars, and Betty Bronson in Peter Pan (1924) as the dastardly Captain Hook. In an offbeat bit of casting he paired up with Clara Bow in Mantrap (1926) as a gentle, bear-like backwoodsman in search of a wife, and participated in other silent classics such as The King of Kings (1927) (as Peter) and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) as Buster Keaton's steamboat captain Dad.

Despite his celluloid villainy, Ernest was known as a courtly and cultivated gentleman in private. He made the transition into talking films intact and was able to play a marvelous nemesis, Dr. Moriarty, to Clive Brooks' Sherlock Holmes (1932) before his untimely death. Ernest died following his filming as a smuggler in I Cover the Waterfront (1933) starring Claudette Colbert in New York on May 15,1933, at the relatively young age of 54. It seems that while en route to Europe by ship, Torrence suffered an acute attack of gall stones and was rushed back to a New York hospital. He died of complications following surgery. Looking and usually playing much older than he was, Hollywood lost a marvelously talented and robust character player who had dozens of films ahead of him.

Blanche Friderici was born on 21 January 1878 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for It Happened One Night (1934), Sadie Thompson (1928) and Secrets (1933). She was married to Donald Campbell. She died on 23 December 1933 in Visalia, California, USA.

Actor, comedian, and composer, educated at the Sargent School of Acting. His Broadway stage appearances included "The Little Missus", "The Mimic World", "The Firefly", and "How's Your Health?". He was a member of the Fortune Gallo Opera Company, and joined ASCAP in 1957. He composed the popular song "Some Little Bug is Going to Bite You".