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For many years Walter Huston had two passions: his career as an engineer and his vocation for the stage. In 1909 he dedicated himself to the theatre, and made his debut on Broadway in 1924. In 1929 he journeyed to Hollywood, where his talent and ability made him one of the most respected actors in the industry. He won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

Al Jolson was known in the industry as "The World's Greatest Entertainer," for well over 40 years. After his death his influence continued unabated with such performers as Sammy Davis Jr., Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Jackie Wilson and Jerry Lee Lewis all mentioning him as an inspiration.

Al Jolson was born Asa Yoelson in Seredzius, Lithuania, to a Jewish family, the son of Naiomi Etta (Cantor) and Moise Rubin Yoelson, who emigrated alone to Washington, D.C., to establish himself. After four years he sent for his family. Nine months later his wife died (apparently during childbirth), which devastated the eight-year-old Asa. Young Al would soon find his outlet in the theater. Soon he was singing with his older brother, Harry, for senators and soldiers. He entertained the troops that were headed for the Spanish-American War.

Jolson's career in vaudeville started with his brother in New York, but never really got off the ground. Different partners allowed Jolson to experiment, but it was as a solo act in San Francisco that he finally hit it big. He was signed eventually by Lew Dockstaders' Minstrels. It is important to note that, although performing in blackface, Dockstader's was not a minstrel show in the traditional sense of the "Tambo and Bones" variety of the previous century. It was a sophisticated, topical, Broadway-style revue. The myth lingers to this day that Jolson was a minstrel. He most certainly was not.

Jolson's stay in vaudeville was relatively short, as his talent was quickly recognized by the Shubert Brothers, who signed him to appear in the opening show of their new Winter Garden Theater on Broadway in April of 1912. Thus began what many consider to be the greatest career in the history of Broadway. Not a headliner initially, Jolson soon became "King of the Winter Garden," with shows specifically written for him. "Winter Garden" and "Jolson" became synonymous for close to 20 years. During that time Jolson received reviews that have yet to be matched. Audiences shouted, pleaded and often would not allow the show to proceed, such was the power of his presence. At one performance in Boston, the usually staid and conservative Boston audience stopped the show for 45 minutes! He was said to have had an "electric' personality, along with the ability to make each member of the audience believe that he was singing only to them.

In 1927 Jolson starred in the New York-shot The Jazz Singer (1927) and the rest is film history. But just before it was theatrically released, producer, Warner' His appearance in that film, nowadays considered a somewhat creaky, stodgy and primitive museum piece, electrified audiences and caused a sensation. Jolson was bigger than ever and Hollywood came a-calling. However, Jolson on film was a pale version of Jolson on stage. His screen appearances, with some exceptions, are stiff and wooden. Though he continued into the 1930s to star on radio, he was no longer quite the star he had been.

During World War II, Jolson entertained troops in Africa and Sicily but was cut short by a bout of malaria and pneumonia. Always a favorite with audiences, he continued to entertain in the United States when he met his fourth wife, Erle Chenault Galbraith, an x-ray technician.

By the mid-'40s, though. his stardom had faded quite a bit. Columbia Pictures, inspired by the success of Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), decided that a Jolson biography might work as well. In 1946 it released The Jolson Story (1946), with song-and-dance man Larry Parks miming to Jolson's vocals. It was the surprise smash hit of the season and the highest grossing film of the year. Parks received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Jolson was now as big, or bigger, than ever. So successful was the film that Columbia made a sequel, Jolson Sings Again (1949), which remains one of a few biography sequels in film history (Funny Girl/Funny Lady - the story of fellow Winter Garden performer Fannie Brice is another rare example). It was also quite successful at the box office. So big had Jolson's star risen that in 1948, when Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Perry Como were at their peaks, Jolson was voted "The Most Popular Male Vocalist" by a Variety poll.

In 1950, against his doctor's orders, Jolson went to Korea to entertain his favorite audience, American troops. While there his health declined and shortly after his return to the U.S. he suffered a massive heart attack and died.

Alan Hale decided on a film career after his attempt at becoming an opera singer didn't pan out. He quickly became much in demand as a supporting actor, starred in several films for Cecil B. DeMille and directed others for him. With the advent of sound, Hale played leads in a few films but soon settled down into a career as one of the busiest character actors in the business. He was one of the featured members of what became known as the "Warner Brothers Stock Co.", a corps of character actors and actresses who appeared in scores of Warner Bros. films of the 1930s and 1940s. Hale's best-known role is probably in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), one of several films he made with his friend Errol Flynn, in which he played Little John, a role he played in two other films: Robin Hood (1922) and Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950).

Jane Cowl was born in Boston, Massachusetts on December 14, 1884. Jane was one of the fine stage actresses of her time, who eventually found her way onto the silver screen in 1915 in Garden of Lies (1915). She appeared (and became a playwright) on Broadway from 1903-47; acted in The Spreading Dawn (1917) in 1917 but she stepped away from films for a long time. She concentrated on not only her stage acting, but also her career as a playwright. She penned five plays between 1918 and 1941. In 1943, 28 years after her second film, Jane returned to the big screen with a small role in Stage Door Canteen (1943). Years later, in 1949, she was in Once More, My Darling (1949). After 1950's The Secret Fury (1950), Jane realized she had cancer. She died on June 22, 1950 in Santa Monica, California. She was 67 years old. Her last film, Payment on Demand (1951), was released the following year.

Renowned director Rex Ingram started his film career as a set designer and painter. His directorial debut was The Great Problem (1916). A true master of the medium, Ingram despised the business haggling required in the Hollywood system. He was also unhappy with the level of writing he found in American writers. This led him to work with such foreign writers as Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, which resulted in the first major role for the young Rudolph Valentino. Ingram was a great friend of Erich von Stroheim who, like Ingram, was a great filmmaker but often went way over budget. In 1924 Ingram moved to Nice, France, where, in his own studios, he directed films of his own choosing, often with his then-wife Alice Terry. In his later career he acted as a mentor to the young Michael Powell.

His real name was Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, and in the early 1900s, he was already working in the theater under Max Reinhardt's company. Important movies where he defined himself as a convincing actor were Passion (1919) and Quo Vadis? (1924), followed by The Last Laugh (1924) (aka The Last Laugh) in 1924 and Variety (1925) (aka Variety) in 1925. In 1928, he became the first male leading actor to receive the academy award for The Last Command (1928) directed by Josef von Sternberg. In 1929, Stenberg directed him in his world famous movie The Blue Angel (1930) (aka The Blue Angel) co-starring the young Marlene Dietrich (her first role). Later on, he concentrated on theater and dedicated his acting skills to the Nazi regime and also took part in the realization of Ohm Krüger (1941) in 1941, an expensive anti-British film production. When the Second World War ended, the US government cleaned his image, and he converted to Catholicism. He played in a few more German movies, but his career never recaptured its brilliance.

Dublin-born Sara Allgood started her acting career in her native country with the famed Abbey Theatre. From there she traveled to the English stage, where she played for many years before making her film debut in 1918. Her warm, open Irish face meant that she spent a lot of time playing Irish mothers, landladies, neighborhood gossips and the like, although she is best remembered for playing Mrs. Morgan, the mother of a family of Welsh miners, in How Green Was My Valley (1941), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her sister Maire O'Neill was an actress in Ireland, and famed Irish poet William Butler Yeats was a family friend.

Sara Allgood died of a heart attack shortly after making her last film, Sierra (1950).

Born the son of an Opium Agent in Bengal, Eric Blair was educated in England (Eton 1921). The joined the British Imperial Police in Burma, serving until 1927. He then travelled around England and Europe, doing various odd jobs to support his writing. By 1935 he had adopted the 'pen-name' of 'George Orwell' and had written his first novels. He married in 1936. In 1937, he and his wife fought against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. He produced some 3000 pages of essays and newspaper articles as well as several books and programs for the BBC.

The Anglo-Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, acquired a reputation as the greatest dramatist in the English language during the first half of the 20th Century for the plays he had written at the height of his creativity from "Mrs. Warren's Profession" in 1893 to "The Apple Cart" in 1929. His works have been revived on Broadway from 1894 to 2010. His most famous work in the 21st Century is My Fair Lady (1964), the musical adaptation of Pygmalion (1938).

A Shavian drama (his reputation was so great, he had his own adjective ascribed to his works) had a biting social critique leavened by humor. According to his Nobel Prize citation, "His ideas were those of a somewhat abstract logical radicalism; hence they were far from new, but they received from him a new definiteness and brilliance. In him these ideas combined with a ready wit, a complete absence of respect for any kind of convention, and the merriest humor - all gathered together in an extravagance which has scarcely ever before appeared in literature."

He was a major international celebrity and a force in British politics, being a charter member of the Fabian Society. The Fabians were committed to democratic socialism, that is, using parliamentary mechanisms to encourage a gradual adoption of socialist policies through political reform rather than revolution.

An American actress most frequently seen in bit parts in comedy shorts, mostly at Columbia Pictures, particularly those of The Three Stooges, Symona Boniface entered the theatre as a playwright and actress, and produced plays as well. After the stock market crash of 1929 she began taking bit parts in films, many of them merely dress-extra jobs. She had a few substantial supporting roles, but most often she was merely a figure in the background. In the 1930s she signed on as a contract player at Columbia, and began appearing in almost all of that studio's comedy shorts. Most frequently she performed as a foil for The Three Stooges, though she also worked with Andy Clyde. Her haughty demeanor made her perfect for the stuffy grande dames whose lives were made miserable by the incursion of idiot Stooges, and she is a memorable, if rarely identified, part of the Stooge comedy legacy. She died at 56 in 1950, though her image continued to show up for years afterwards due to Columbia's habit of using footage from films shot years previously to pad many of its "new" shorts in order to save money.

Although many people are under the impression that Pedro de Cordoba was Mexican, his mother was French and his father was Cuban, and he was born in New York City. De Cordoba's career began in silent films, where he established himself as a solid character actor, and his career carried over into talkies. A tall, somewhat frail-looking man, he often played wealthy, aristocratic Latins, usually (but not always) kind-hearted and benevolent.

Charles Kemper was born on 6 September 1900 in Oklahoma, USA. He was an actor, known for Scarlet Street (1945), The Doolins of Oklahoma (1949) and Fighting Father Dunne (1948). He was married to Jacqueline Kemper. He died on 12 May 1950 in Burbank, California, USA.

Frances Seymour Fonda was born on 4 April 1908 in Brockville, Ontario, Canada. She was married to Henry Fonda and George Tuttle Brokaw. She died on 14 April 1950 in Beacon, New York, USA.

Marguerite de la Motte was trained as a dancer, reputedly by the great ballerina Anna Pavlova, and entered films in 1918. She played opposite Douglas Fairbanks in many of his productions. Like many performers of the silent era, however, she was not able to sustain her career with the coming of talkies, and was soon relegated to smaller roles in minor productions.

Though the circumstances of Helen Holmes' birth are somewhat hazy (sources place it in either Chicago or Louisville, KY, in mid-June or early July of 1893), what isn't hazy is that she was, with Pearl White, the queen of the railroad serials of the mid-teens and early '20s. Holmes always played a strong-willed, independent and resourceful heroine, just as capable of running after, jumping on and stopping a runaway train as she was batting her eyes at the male "hero". Although she was convent-educated, her parents were poor and could barely afford her education, so as she got older she became a photographer's model to help pay the family bills.

Her brother's ill health necessitated a family move from cold, damp Chicago to the hot, dry climate of California's Death Valley. It was there that her taste for adventure was given full rein. In that desolate, sparsely populated country she prospected for gold and for a short time lived among a local Indian tribe. Her brother soon died, though, and in 1910 Helen moved to New York and began appearing in local plays. She had become friends with film star Mabel Normand, and after a short correspondence Normand invited her to Hollywood, where she got her friend some modeling and movie work. Holmes soon achieved success, and by 1913 was starring in her own films. She met her husband, director J.P. McGowan, at Kalem Studios while she was acting in, and he was directing, The Hazards of Helen (1914) serial. The two soon formed their own production company, and their films, both serials and features, achieved great success. By 1919, though, Mutual Films, the company that distributed their movies, had gone under. Without Mutual's financial backing the budgets on their films shrank precipitously, and not being able to afford to make railroad serials anymore, Helen was now turned into a newspaperwoman, a switch that did not sit well with her fans. Although she continued to make films and serials, many of them weren't starring roles anymore, and the fact that a good percentage of them were for the cheap independent market meant that relatively few audiences actually saw them.

Her marriage to McGowan broke up in 1925. She subsequently married a movie stuntman, and basically retired from the screen in 1926, although she made a few appearances in small parts over the next 20 years.

She kept her hand in the business by becoming a trainer for animals used in the movies, but that lasted until her husband died in 1946. Her health had been deteriorating for several years by that time, and she died of a heart attack in 1950.

Camelia was born on 13 December 1919 in Alexandria, Egypt. She was an actress, known for Shari al-bahlawan (1949), Akher kedba (1950) and Waladi (1949). She died on 31 August 1950 in El Buhayra, Egypt.

His father had been a major in the Union army during the Civil War. Edgar Rice Burroughs attended the Brown School then, due to a diphtheria epidemic, Miss Coolie's Maplehurst School for Girls, then the Harvard School, Phillips Andover and the Michigan Military Academy. He was a mediocre student and flunked his examination for West Point. He worked a variety of jobs all over the country: a cowboy in Idaho, a gold miner in Oregon, a railroad policeman in Utah, a department manager for Sears Roebuck in Chicago. He published "A Princess of Mars" under the title "Under the Moons of Mars" in six parts between February and July of 1912. The same "All-Story Magazine" put out his immediately successful "Tarzan of the Apes" in October of that year. Two years later the hardback book appeared, and on January 27, 1918, the movie opened on Broadway starring Elmo Lincoln as Tarzan. It was one of the first movies to gross over $1,000,000. Burroughs was able to move his family to the San Fernando Valley in 1919, converting a huge estate into Tarzana Ranch. He was in Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941 and remained in Hawaii as a war correspondent. Afterward he returned home with a heart condition. On March 19, 1950, alone in his home after reading the Sunday comics in bed, he died. By then he had written 91 novels, 26 of which were about Tarzan. The man whose books have sold hundreds of millions of copies in over thirty languages once said "I write to escape ... to escape poverty".

Dewey Robinson was born on 17 August 1898 in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He was an actor, known for A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), The Return of Jimmy Valentine (1936) and 6 Hours to Live (1932). He was married to Louise Arlene Woolner. He died on 11 December 1950 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

Bull Montana was born on 16 May 1887 in Voghera, Lombardy, Italy. He was an actor, known for Victory (1919), The Lost World (1925) and Laughing at Danger (1924). He was married to Mary Mathews. He died on 24 January 1950 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

John Stahl was the final executive in charge of Tiffany Pictures (located on the Talisman lot, later owned by Monogram Pictures), once a big fish in the pond of "Poverty Row", which in those days also included Columbia Pictures. With a B-movie history dating back to the silent era and after making 70 talkies, Tiffany imploded in 1932 in the midst of the deepening Depression and ended its days grinding out the "Chimp Comedies" series of shorts, in which chimps "lip-synched"--by means of having them chew bubble gum--to dubbed actors' voices scripted to corny plots. These simian shorts were popular as filler in second-run movie houses until the freakish novelty wore thin. A sad end to a studio once notable for a roster of stars that included Rex Lease, Ken Maynard, Conway Tearle, Bob Steele and Mae Murray.

Stahl moved over to MGM, producing and directing the notable flop Parnell (1937), widely considered the studio's worst effort to date. Despite this, he would continue in the business as a producer and director of some note until his death in 1950.

Zeffie Tilbury was born on 20 November 1863 in London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Werewolf of London (1935) and Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935). She was married to L. E. Woodthorpe and Arthur Frederick Lewis. She died on 24 July 1950 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Hank Bell was born on 21 January 1892 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The White Horseman (1921), The Last Straw (1920) and The Scrappin' Kid (1926). He died on 4 February 1950 in Hollywood, California, USA.

Christy Cabanne was, along with Sam Newfield and William Beaudine, one of the most prolific directors in the history of American films.

Cabanne spent several years in the navy, leaving the service in 1908. He decided on a career in the theater, and became a director as well as an actor. Although acting was his primary profession, when he finally broke into the film business it was as a director. He joined the Fine Arts Co., then was employed as an assistant to D.W. Griffith. Being a published author, he found himself hired by Metro Pictures to write a serial. After that he formed his own production company, but shut it down a few years later and became a director for hire, mainly of low- to medium-budget films for such studios as FBO, Associated Exhibitors, Tiffany and Pathe. Although he worked in the rarefied atmosphere at MGM on a few occasions, he was usually to be found toiling away at the lower end of lower-level studios. In the 1930s his fortunes picked up a bit and he did quite a bit of work at Universal, but from there his career nosedived and he ended up cranking out cheap westerns, shoddy jungle pictures and limp horror films for the likes of Monogram, PRC and Screen Guild.

Joe Yule was born on 30 April 1892 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He was an actor, known for Jiggs and Maggie Out West (1950), Jiggs and Maggie in Court (1948) and Jiggs and Maggie in Society (1947). He was married to Leota Hullinger and Nell Ruth Waite "Nellie W." Carter. He died on 30 March 1950 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Worried-looking, balding, moustachioed and usually bespectacled small part character actor, prolific during the 1930s and 40s. Hobart Cavanaugh played downtrodden or henpecked little men -- the perennial victim, forever nervous or bewildered -- to absolute perfection. He was most at home as clerks, mailmen, minor officials, undertakers, shopkeepers and bank tellers. However, when called upon, he could be just as convincing as a sneaky or vaguely sinister villain's accomplice.

A former engineering student at the University of California, Cavanaugh began his acting career on the stage, making his debut on Broadway in 1916. He entered films, somewhat inauspiciously, with a forgotten B-picture, which was shot in New York by the independent Gotham Company. It took another five years, until he was signed by First National/Warner Brothers, where he remained under contract until 1936, thereafter free-lancing. His mild-mannered personae remained in constant demand in Hollywood, for he tallied up an impressive 190 screen appearances -- though often uncredited -- right up until his death in 1950.