William Clement Frawley was an American Vaudevillian and actor best known for playing landlord Fred Mertz in the sitcom I Love Lucy. Frawley also played "Bub" O'Casey during the first five seasons of the sitcom My Three Sons and the political advisor to the Hon. Henry X. Harper in the film Miracle on 34th Street.
Edward Dmytryk was a Canadian-born American film director and editor. He was known for his 1940s noir films and received an Oscar nomination for Best Director for Crossfire (1947). In 1947, he was named as one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of blacklisted film industry professionals who refused to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in their investigations during the McCarthy-era Red Scare. They all served time in prison for contempt of Congress. In 1951, however, Dmytryk testified to the HUAC and named individuals, including Arnold Manoff, whose careers were then destroyed for many years, to rehabilitate his own career. First hired again by independent producer Stanley Kramer in 1952, Dmytryk is likely best known for directing The Caine Mutiny (1954), a critical and commercial success. The second-highest-grossing film of the year, it was nominated for Best Picture and several other awards at the 1955 Oscars. Dmytryk was nominated for a Directors Guild Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures.
Jane Darwell was an American actress of stage, film, and television. With appearances in more than 100 major movies spanning half a century, Darwell is perhaps best remembered for her poignant portrayal of the matriarch and leader of the Joad family in the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, for which she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
George Bancroft was an American film actor, whose career spanned seventeen years from 1925 to 1942. He was cast in many notable films alongside major film stars throughout his Hollywood years.
John Howard was an American actor. He is best remembered for his roles in the films Lost Horizon (1937) and The Philadelphia Story (1940).
Lionel Alfred William Atwill was an English stage and screen actor. He began his acting career at the Garrick Theatre. After coming to the U.S., he subsequently appeared in various Broadway plays and Hollywood films. Some of his more significant roles were in Captain Blood (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939) and To Be or Not to Be (1942).
Patrick Barry Sullivan was an American actor of film, television, theatre, and radio. In a career that spanned over 40 years, Sullivan appeared in over 100 movies from the 1930s to the 1980s, primarily as a leading actor after establishing himself in the industry, and later as a character actor.
Kent Taylor was an American actor of film and television. Taylor appeared in more than 110 films, the bulk of them B-movies in the 1930s and 1940s, although he also had roles in more prestigious studio releases, including Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), I'm No Angel (1933), Cradle Song (1933), Death Takes a Holiday (1934), Payment on Demand (1951), and Track the Man Down (1955). He had the lead role in Half Past Midnight in 1948, among a few others.
Charles Gordon Booth was a British-born writer who settled in America and wrote several classic Hollywood stories, including The General Died at Dawn (1936) and Sundown (1941). He won an Academy Award for Best Story for The House on 92nd Street in 1945, a thinly disguised version of the FBI "Duquesne Spy Ring saga", which led to the largest espionage conviction in the history of the United States. He also penned the short story "Caviar for His Excellency" which was the basis for the play "The Magnificent Fraud" and was the basis for Paul Mazursky's 1988 film Moon Over Parador.
"My Melancholy Baby" is a popular song published in 1912 and first sung publicly by William Frawley. The music was written by Ernie Burnett (1884–1959), the lyrics by George A. Norton.
The Devil and Daniel Webster is a 1941 American supernatural film based on the 1938 play adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benét's 1936 short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster". The play by Benét was in turn based on the libretto created by Benét for an opera adaptation of his short story with composer Douglas Moore, a project he began writing in 1937. Benét and Dan Totheroh adapted the play into the film's screenplay.
Wiard Boppo "Bill" Ihnen was an American art director. He was active from 1919 to 1960 and won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction for Wilson (1944) and Blood on the Sun (1945). He was married to Edith Head.
Huckleberry Finn is a 1931 American pre-Code adventure comedy film directed by Norman Taurog, and written by Grover Jones and William Slavens McNutt, based on Mark Twain's 1884 novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It stars Jackie Coogan as Tom Sawyer, Mitzi Green as Becky Thatcher, Junior Durkin as Huckleberry Finn, and Jackie Searl as Sid Sawyer.
Harvey Stephens was an American actor, known initially for his performances in Broadway productions, and thereafter for his work in film and on television. He was most active in film beginning in the 1930s and through the mid-1940s. Beginning in the mid-1950s, he transitioned to television and enjoyed success there through the 1960s.
Reno is a 1939 American drama film directed by John Farrow and starring Richard Dix, Gail Patrick and Anita Louise.
Jesse Graves (1879–1949), also known as Jessie Graves or Jesse A. Graves, was an American character actor of the 1930s and 1940s. During his career he appeared in over 100 films. Some of the more notable include: After the Thin Man in 1936, which stars William Powell, Myrna Loy, and James Stewart; 1938's Jezebel with Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, and George Brent; the Mickey Rooney version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939); Frank Capra's 1939 political comedy-drama, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, starring James Stewart and Jean Arthur; the Orson Welles classic, Citizen Kane (1941); the George Gershwin biopic, Rhapsody in Blue (1945); and the 1948 Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn romantic comedy, State of the Union. His final film was the 1949 western, El Paso, starring John Payne and Gail Russell. As a Black American during this era, most of his roles were as butlers, redcaps, porters, waiters and other servant positions.
Gildersleeve's Bad Day is a 1943 American comedy film directed by Gordon Douglas from a screenplay by Jack Townley. The picture was the second in the Gildersleeve's series produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, based on the popular NBC radio program, The Great Gildersleeve, created by Leonard L. Levinson, and was released on June 10, 1943. The film stars Harold Peary, Jane Darwell and Nancy Gates.
Ambush is a 1939 American drama film directed by Kurt Neumann and written by Laura Perelman and S. J. Perelman. The film stars Gladys Swarthout, Lloyd Nolan, William "Bill" Henry, William Frawley, Ernest Truex and Broderick Crawford. The film was released on January 20, 1939, by Paramount Pictures.
Thekla M. Bernays was an American author, journalist, artist, art collector, speaker, and suffragette.
Harry Fischbeck (1879–1968) was a German-born cinematographer who emigrated to the United States where he worked in the American film industry. He was employed by a variety of different studios during his career including Universal, United Artists and Warner Brothers, but primarily for Paramount Pictures. One of his first credits was for the historical The Lincoln Cycle films directed by John M. Stahl.
