The top 210 actors (supporting role) in the golden age of Hollywood

101. Herb Edelman

Herb Edelman was born on November 5, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor and assistant director, known for The Odd Couple (1968), The Golden Girls (1985) and The Way We Were (1973). He was married to Louise Sorel. He died on July 21, 1996 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

102. Cecil Parker

Actor | The Lady Vanishes

An air of almost smug disdain would hang over his characters like a grey cloud. Yet he could end up being a ray of sunshine with that cloud. Stage or screen, comedy or drama, playing butler or Lord Commander, Englishman Cecil Parker was born in 1897 and took an avid interest in performing following...

103. Alice Brady

Actress | My Man Godfrey

Alice Brady was born in New York City on November 2, 1892. She was interested in the stage from childhood, as her father was famed Broadway producer William A. Brady. After a few stage productions, Alice was discovered by movie producers in New York, since this was the film capital at the time. Her...

104. Mischa Auer

Actor | My Man Godfrey

Mischa Auer, the American screen's supreme exponent of the "Mad Russian" stereotype so dear to Yankee hearts before and after World War II, was born Mischa Ounskowsky on November 17, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia, the grandson of violinist Leopold Auer, whose surname he took when he became a ...

105. Gail Patrick

Actress | My Man Godfrey

Cold, calculating and hard-as-nails is probably the best definition of Gail Patrick's femmes on the 30s and 40s silver screen, and the actress herself was no softie in real life. The tall, slender, patrician beauty was born with the equally stately-sounding name Margaret LaVelle Fitzpatrick in ...

106. Gale Sondergaard

Actress | The Mark of Zorro

Sly, manipulative, dangerously cunning and sinister were the key words that best described the roles that Gale Sondergaard played in motion pictures, making her one of the most talented character actresses ever seen on the screen. She was educated at the University of Minnesota and later married ...

107. Edward Arnold

Actor | You Can't Take It with You

Edward Arnold was born as Gunther Edward Arnold Schneider in 1890, on the Lower East Side of New York City, the son of German immigrants, Elizabeth (Ohse) and Carl Schneider. Arnold began his acting career on the New York stage and became a film actor in 1916. A burly man with a commanding style ...

108. Martha Raye

Actress | Billy Rose's Jumbo

Known as "The Big Mouth" and considered the female equivalent to Bob Hope, Martha Raye was an American icon in her own right.

She was born Margy Reed in Butte, Montana, to Maybelle Hazel (Hooper) and Peter Reed, Jr., vaudeville performers. She had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Raye made her ...

109. Oscar Levant

Actor | An American in Paris

Oscar Levant's own versatility may have helped to cloud his memory as a sort of Hollywood utility man, perhaps in the worst sense; people tended to see him as one among many personalities, but he was so much more. It is unfortunately forgotten that he was first and foremost, a brilliant musician ...

110. Alice Pearce

Actress | Bewitched

Making a career out of a post-nasal drip, this scene-stealing character comedienne was one of the best Broadway and Hollywood had to offer. It's too bad, then, that she wasn't utilized in films more often for this slight, chinless, parrot-faced, squawky-voiced bundle of (kill)joy could draw laughs ...

111. Frank Albertson

Actor | Psycho

Frank Albertson entered the film industry in 1922 as a prop boy, but soon graduated into acting. He was a prolific and reliable character actor who occasionally played the lead in a "B" picture, but was used mainly as a supporting actor in scores of films, often cast as a wisecracking cab driver, a...

112. Sydney Greenstreet

Actor | The Maltese Falcon

Sydney Greenstreet's father was a leather merchant with eight children. Sydney left home at age 18 to make his fortune as a Ceylon tea planter, but drought forced him out of business and back to England. He managed a brewery and, to escape boredom, took acting lessons. His stage debut was as a ...

113. Sessue Hayakawa

Actor | The Bridge on the River Kwai

Sessue Hayakawa was born in Chiba, Japan. His father was the provincial governor and his mother a member of an aristocratic family of the "samurai" class. The young Hayakawa wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and become a career officer in the Japanese navy, but he was turned down due to ...

114. Jack Klugman

Actor | 12 Angry Men

As a film character actor, Klugman was the epitome of the everyman. He was one of the pioneers of television acting in the 1950s, and is best remembered for his 1970s TV work as Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple (1970) and as the medical examiner on Quincy M.E. (1976).

115. John Fiedler

Actor | 12 Angry Men

Typical of busy character actors, Fiedler made his face (and voice) recognizable to millions. Many know the bald-pated Fiedler as therapy patient "Mr. Peterson" on The Bob Newhart Show (1972); others might first recognize him for the 1968 movie, The Odd Couple (1968), and spin-off TV show, The Odd ...

116. Horst Buchholz

Actor | La vita è bella

On the cast list of The Magnificent Seven (1960), you will find several names that doubtless you know well: Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, and Yul Brynner. But there is one name that you will have difficulty pronouncing, let alone identifying as an actor you have seen before. That man is Horst ...

117. Donald O'Connor

Actor | Singin' in the Rain

Born into a vaudeville family, O'Connor was the youthful figure cutting a rug in several Universal musicals of the 1940s. His best-known musical work is probably Singin' in the Rain (1952), in which he did an impressive dance that culminated in a series of backflips off the wall. O'Connor was also ...

118. Hope Holiday

Actress | The Apartment

Like Judy Holliday a decade before her, Hope Holiday became known as the dame with "the voice" during the 1960s, her scratchy Brooklynese tones immediately identifiable on film and TV. This buoyant character comedienne, whose blonde tomboy looks and robust energy was reminiscent of Betty Hutton and...

119. Constance Cummings

Actress | Blithe Spirit

Coming from a musical family - her mother was a concert soprano - Constance Cummings made her show business debut in 1926 in regional stock theater, and by 1928 had appeared in her first Broadway play. Her success in the theater resulted in an invitation to Hollywood, where she went 1931. Although ...

120. Woody Strode

Actor | Spartacus

An athlete turned actor, Strode was a top-notch decathlete and a football star at UCLA. He became part of Hollywood lore after meeting director John Ford and becoming a part of the Ford "family," appearing in four Ford motion pictures. Strode also played the powerful gladiator who does battle with ...

121. Thelma Todd

Actress | Horse Feathers

Thelma Todd was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, an industrial city near the New Hampshire state line. She was a lovely child with good academic tendencies, so much so that she decided early on to become a schoolteacher. After high school she went on to college but at her mother's insistence ...

122. Lee J. Cobb

Actor | 12 Angry Men

Lee J. Cobb, one of the premier character actors in American film for three decades in the post-World War II period, was born Leo Jacoby in New York City's Lower East Side on December 8, 1911. The son of a Jewish newspaper editor, young Leo was a child prodigy in music, mastering the violin and the...

123. Maggie McNamara

Actress | The Moon Is Blue

Maggie McNamara -- with her brown hair in a ponytail -- arrives in Rome in Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) expecting great things to happen. Petite and slender, she looks almost like a schoolgirl in her prim blue suit. She is bright and vivacious and goes for what she wants -- a proposal from "...

124. Martin Balsam

Actor | All the President's Men

Martin Henry Balsam was born on November 4, 1919 in the Bronx, New York City, to Lillian (Weinstein) and Albert Balsam, a manufacturer of women's sportswear. He was the first-born child. His father was a Russian Jewish immigrant, and his mother was born in New York, to Russian Jewish parents. ...

125. Jack Palance

Actor | City Slickers

Jack Palance quite often exemplified evil incarnate on film, portraying some of the most intensely feral villains witnessed in 1950s westerns and melodrama. Enhanced by his tall, powerful build, icy voice, and piercing eyes, he earned two "Best Supporting Actor" nominations early in his career. It ...

126. Slim Pickens

Actor | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Slim Pickens spent the early part of his career as a real cowboy and the latter part playing cowboys, and he is best remembered for a single "cowboy" image: that of bomber pilot Maj. "King" Kong waving his cowboy hat rodeo-style as he rides a nuclear bomb onto its target in the great black comedy ...

127. Arthur Kennedy

Actor | Lawrence of Arabia

Arthur Kennedy, one of the premier character actors in American film from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, achieved fame in the role of Biff in Elia Kazan's historic production of Arthur Miller's Pultizer-Prize winning play "Death of a Salesman." Although he was not selected to recreate the ...

128. Franchot Tone

Actor | Dangerous

President of the Dramatic Club at Cornell University, Franchot Tone gave up the family business for acting, making his Broadway debut in "The Age of Innocence".

Tone then went into movies for MGM, making his film debut (at Paramount Pictures) in The Wiser Sex (1932). With his theatrical background, ...

129. Bob Burns

Actor | Radio City Revels

After growing up in a small Arkansas town, Bob Burns qualified as a civil engineer, but also worked as a salesman, farmed peanuts, and in World War I was a Marine sergeant and champion rifleman. His great interest from boyhood was music, and from 1911 his main career was in entertainment. He played...

130. Georges Guétary

Actor | An American in Paris

When we hear songs like "Rambino" and " Ciao Ciao Bambino" the name of Georges Guétary cames to one's mind. But also as a producer of " Bless the bride", "Latin Quartier" in London and "Arms and the girl" on Broadway, he added light and charm to show business. The last show to celebrate 50 years of...

131. George Zucco

Actor | Fog Island

At 22, George Zucco decided to begin his stage career in earnest in the Canadian provinces in 1908. In the course of the following decade, he also performed in an American vaudeville tour with his young wife, Frances, in a routine called "The Suffragette." As World War I grew in scale, Zucco ...

132. Dean Stockwell

Actor | Quantum Leap

Dean Robert Stockwell grew up in North Hollywood, the son of Broadway performers Harry Stockwell and Elizabeth "Betty" Stockwell (née Veronica). His vaudevillian father was a replacement Curly in the original production of "Oklahoma!". He was also a decent tenor whose voice was used for the part of...

133. Baby Sandy

Actress | Bachelor Daddy

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, cute little Baby Sandy was Universal's answer to Shirley Temple, and after appearances in a few films, she was given her own series. They were very popular with the public and made a ton of money for the studio. Her last picture was made at the ripe old age of 5, ...

134. Frank Faylen

Actor | It's a Wonderful Life

American character actor who specialized in average-guy parts and who could be equally effective in sympathetic or unlikeable roles. His parents, the vaudeville team of Ruf and Cusik, took him onstage with them when he was a baby, and Faylen grew up in the theatre. He attended St. Joseph's ...

135. S.Z. Sakall

Actor | Casablanca

Hungarian-born S.Z. Sakall was a veteran of German, Hungarian and British films when he left Europe because of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. In Hollywood from shortly after the outbreak of World War II, Sakall began appearing in comedies and musicals, often playing a lovable if ...

136. Franklin Pangborn

Actor | Hail the Conquering Hero

Franklin Pangborn - a name more befitting a fictionalized bank president rather than a great comedic actor - was a singular character actor but little is known of his early years. He spent some time in developing acting talent prior to appearing on Broadway by March of 1911, and would do six plays ...

137. Brian Donlevy

Actor | Beau Geste

It seems that Brian Donlevy started out life as colorfully as any character he ever played on the stage or screen. He lied about his age (he was actually 14) in 1916 so he could join the army. When Gen. John J. Pershing sent American troops to invade Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa--Mexican ...

138. Akim Tamiroff

Actor | Touch of Evil

Though born in Georgia and having a Russian-sounding name, Akim Tamiroff is actually of Armenian descent. At 19 he decided to pursue acting as a career and was chosen from among 500 applicants to the Moscow Art Theater School. There he studied under the great Konstantin Stanislavski, and launched a...

139. Rudy Vallee

Actor | The Palm Beach Story

Rudy Vallee started his career as a saxophone player and singer and later became a bandleader. In the 1920s and early '30s he had a hit radio program, The Fleishmann's Yeast Hour (although his explosive, ego-driven personality made his cast and crew hate him). In the early 1930s he was ranked with ...

140. Jimmy Conlin

Actor | Sullivan's Travels

Jimmy Conlin was born on October 14, 1884 in Camden, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for Sullivan's Travels (1941), Calling Philo Vance (1940) and The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). He was married to Dorothy Julia Ryan, Myrtle Glass and Lillian Grace Steel (actress). He died on May 7, ...

141. William Schallert

Actor | Innerspace

The son of Edwin Schallert, drama editor of the "Los Angeles Times" and the dean of West Coast critics, William Schallert became interested in an acting career while at UCLA in 1942. After graduation, he became involved with the Circle Theater (eventually becoming one of its owners) and made his ...

142. Barry Fitzgerald

Actor | The Quiet Man

One of Hollywood's finest character actors and most accomplished scene stealers, Barry Fitzgerald was born William Joseph Shields in 1888 in Dublin, Ireland. Educated to enter the banking business, the diminutive Irishman with the irresistible brogue was bitten by the acting bug in the 1920s and ...

143. Maximilian Schell

Actor | Judgment at Nuremberg

Maximilian Schell was the most successful German-speaking actor in English-language films since Emil Jannings, the winner of the first Best Actor Academy Award. Like Jannings, Schell won the Oscar, but unlike him, he was a dedicated anti-Nazi. Indeed, with the exception of Maurice Chevalier and ...

144. Edward Platt

Actor | North by Northwest

Forever and fondly remembered as Don Adams' foil on the popular Mel Brooks/Buck Henry spy series Get Smart (1965), character actor Ed Platt (also billed as Edward C. Platt) had been around for two decades prior to copping that rare comedy role. Born in Staten Island, New York, on Valentine's Day, ...

145. Tom Courtenay

Actor | 45 Years

Acting chameleon Sir Tom Courtenay, along with Sir Alan Bates and Albert Finney, became a front-runner in an up-and-coming company of rebel upstarts who created quite a stir in British "kitchen sink" cinema during the early '60s. An undying love for the theatre, however, had Courtenay channeling a ...

146. Jane Darwell

Actress | The Grapes of Wrath

Missouri-born Jane Darwell was born Patti Woodard, the daughter of William Robert Woodard, president of the Louisville Southern Railroad, and Ellen (Booth) Woodard, in Palmyra, Missouri, where she grew up on a ranch . She nursed ambitions to be an opera singer, but put it off because of her ...

147. Edward Binns

Actor | 12 Angry Men

Gravel-voiced, authoritative American character actor, a reliable presence on screen for more than four decades.

Edward Thomas Binns was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Esther (Bracken) and Edward Thoms Binns. His family were Quakers. He was a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and ...

148. Edna May Oliver

Actress | Penguin Pool Murder

She was born Edna May Nutter, a child of solid New England stock, on 9th November 1883 in Malden, Massachusetts. The daughter of Ida May and Charles Edward Nutter, Edna was a descendant of the 2nd American president John Adams and his son, the 6th American president John Quincy Adams. In addition, ...

149. Leo G. Carroll

Actor | North by Northwest

One of the most indispensable of character actors, Leo G. Carroll was already involved in the business of acting as a schoolboy in Gilbert & Sullivan productions. Aged 16, he portrayed an old man in 'Liberty Hall'. In spite of the fact, that he came from a military family, and , perhaps, because of...

150. Simon Oakland

Actor | Psycho

One of the movies' most memorable tough guys, Simon Oakland actually began his career as a concert violinist, turning to acting in the late 1940s. After a long string of roles in Broadway hits, including "Light Up the Sky," "The Shrike" and "Inherit the Wind," Oakland made his film debut as the ...

151. Jessie Royce Landis

Actress | North by Northwest

Jessie Royce Landis was called "an international star" in her New York Times obituary. She was 20 when she made her stage debut at the Playhouse in Chicago as the young countess in "The Highwayman". Soon she was on Broadway. In 1950 she went to London for "Larger Than Life", a dramatization of W. ...

152. Bill Robinson

Soundtrack | The Shape of Water

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 ...

153. Pedro Armendáriz

Actor | From Russia with Love

Born in Mexican revolution times, Pedro Armendáriz was the first child of Mexican Pedro Armendáriz García-Conde and American Adele Hastings. He was raised in Churubusco, then a suburb of Mexico City, before the family traveled to Laredo, Texas. They lived there until 1921, the year Armendáriz' ...

154. Vivian Vance

Actress | I Love Lucy

Born as Vivian Roberta Jones in Cherryvale, Kansas, she had a brother and four sisters. Her family moved to Independence, Kansas, and later studied drama under Anna Ingleman and William Inge. Their next move, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, brought her to that city's Little Theatre, which provided her ...

155. William Frawley

Actor | I Love Lucy

William Frawley was born in Burlington, Iowa. As a boy he sang at St. Paul's Catholic Church and played at the Burlington Opera House. His first job was as a stenographer for the Union Pacific Railroad. He did vaudeville with his brother Paul, then joined pianist Franz Rath in an act they took to ...

156. Buddy Ebsen

Actor | The Beverly Hillbillies

Buddy Ebsen began his career as a dancer in the late 1920s in a Broadway chorus. He later formed a vaudeville act with his sister Vilma Ebsen, which also appeared on Broadway. In 1935 he and his sister went to Hollywood, where they were signed for the first of MGM's Eleanor Powell movies, Broadway ...

157. Darren McGavin

Actor | A Christmas Story

A remarkably seasoned actor of stage, screen and television, Darren McGavin has notched in excess of 200 performances; however, he is most fondly remembered by cult TV fans as heroic newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak in the classic but short-lived horror TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974). ...

158. Preston Foster

Actor | Two Seconds

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...

159. Dirk Bogarde

Actor | The Servant

Sir Dirk Bogarde, distinguished film actor and writer, was born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde on March 28, 1921, to Ulric van den Bogaerde, the art editor of "The Times" (London) newspaper, and actress Margaret Niven in the London suburb of Hampstead. He was one of three children...

160. Rip Torn

Actor | Men in Black

Rip Torn was born Elmore Rual Torn Jr. on February 6, 1931 in Temple, Texas, the son of Thelma Mary (Spacek) and Elmore Rudolph Torn, who was an agriculturalist and economist, credited with popularizing the custom of eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. "Rip" is a family name, taken by ...

161. Robert Loggia

Actor | Big

Born and raised in New York City, Robert Loggia studied journalism at the University of Missouri before moving back to New York to pursue acting. He trained at the Actors Studio while doing stage work. From the late 1950s he was a familiar face on TV, usually as authoritative figures. Loggia also ...

162. Arthur Hunnicutt

Actor | El Dorado

Lean, tall American character actor Arthur Hunnicutt was known for playing humorously wise rural roles. He attended Arkansas State Teachers College in his native state, but was forced to drop out in his third year due to lack of funds. He joined a theatre company in Massachusetts, then migrated to ...

163. Dane Clark

Actor | Destination Tokyo

Dane Clark was born Bernard Elliot Zanville in Brooklyn, New York City, to Rose (Korostoff) and Samuel Zanville, who were Russian Jewish immigrants. He graduated from Cornell University and St. John's Law School (Brooklyn). When he had trouble finding work in the mid-1930s he tried boxing, baseball,...

164. Dan Duryea

Actor | Too Late for Tears

Dan Duryea was educated at Cornell University and worked in the advertising business before pursuing his career as an actor. Duryea made his Broadway debut in the play "Dead End." The critical acclaim he won for his performance as Leo Hubbard in the Broadway production of "The Little Foxes" led to ...

165. Ralph Bellamy

Actor | His Girl Friday

Ralph Bellamy was a veteran actor who was so well-liked and respected by his peers that he was the recipient of an honorary Oscar in 1987 for his contributions to the acting profession.

Ralph Rexford Bellamy was born June 17, 1904 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Lilla Louise (Smith), originally ...

166. Dennis Hopper

Actor | Easy Rider

Multi-talented and unconventional actor/director regarded by many as one of the true "enfant terribles" of Hollywood who led an amazing cinematic career for more than five decades, Dennis Hopper was born on May 17, 1936, in Dodge City, Kansas. The young Hopper expressed interest in acting from a ...

167. Fred MacMurray

Actor | Double Indemnity

Fred MacMurray was likely the most underrated actor of his generation. True, his earliest work is mostly dismissed as pedestrian, but no other actor working in the 1940s and 50s was able to score so supremely whenever cast against type.

Frederick Martin MacMurray was born in Kankakee, Illinois, to ...

168. Robert Cummings

Actor | Dial M for Murder

Effective light comedian of '30s and '40s films and '50s and '60s TV series, Robert Cummings was renowned for his eternally youthful looks (which he attributed to a strict vitamin and health-food diet). He was educated at Carnegie Tech and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Deciding that ...

169. Don DeFore

Actor | Romance on the High Seas

Don DeFore toured the country in stock companies for several years before making his Broadway debut in 1938. In films since 1941, he occasionally played leads in B pictures, but was more often cast as the good-natured buddy of the hero or a likable but gullible character whom the hero has to bail ...

170. Strother Martin

Actor | Cool Hand Luke

American character actor who achieved considerable fame in the last decade of his life. A native of Kokomo, Indiana, Strother Martin Jr. was the youngest of three children of Strother Douglas Martin, a machinist, and Ethel Dunlap Martin. His family moved soon after his birth to San Antonio, Texas, ...

171. Alan Hale Jr.

Actor | Gilligan's Island

The son of the great character actor (and Errol Flynn sidekick) Alan Hale, Alan Hale Jr. (he dropped the Jr. after his father passed away) was literally born into the movies. Hale did his first movie as a baby and continued to act until his death. Unlike other child actors, Hale made a smooth ...

172. James Whitmore

Actor | The Shawshank Redemption

Born on October 1, 1921, in White Plains, New York, gruff veteran character actor James Whitmore earned early and widespread respect with his award-winning dramatic capabilities on Broadway and in films. He would later conquer TV with the same trophy-winning results.

The son of James Allen Whitmore ...

173. Agnes Moorehead

Actress | The Magnificent Ambersons

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 ...

174. John Davis Chandler

Actor | Adventures in Babysitting

Character actor John Davis Chandler was born on January 28, 1935, in Hinton, West Virginia. He was raised in Charleston, West Virginia. Tall and thin, with fair hair, piercing blue eyes, a pale complexion and a nasal, whiny voice, Chandler specialized in portraying mean, neurotic and dangerous ...

175. Eugene Iglesias

Actor | Hiawatha

Iglesias was a prolific supporting actor found in many Hollywood westerns of the 50s and 60s. He was born Eugene Luis Francisco Iglesias Carrillo in San Juan, Puerto Rico, said to have come from a distinguished family with connections to José Luis Alberto Muñoz Marín, the first elected governor of ...

176. Whit Bissell

Actor | The Magnificent Seven

Whit Bissell came to Hollywood in the 1940s, and by the time he retired he had appeared in more than 200 movies and scores of TV series. He is best known for playing the evil scientist who turned Michael Landon into a half beast in the 1957 cult classic film I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). Bissell...

177. Charles Watts

Writer | Kojak

Charles Watts is known for Kojak (1973), The Bold Ones: The Protectors (1969) and Here Come the Brides (1968).

178. Edward Brophy

Actor | The Thin Man

Edward S. Brophy was born on February 27, 1895 in New York City and educated at the University of Virginia. He became a bit and small-part in the movies starting in 1919, but switched to behind-the-scenes work for job security, though he continued appearing in small parts. While serving as a ...

179. Glynis Johns

Actress | Mary Poppins

Glynis Johns was the daughter of actor Mervyn Johns. Best known for her light comedy roles and often playful flirtation, Glynis was born in South Africa while her parents were on tour there (her mother was a concert pianist) but was always proud of her Welsh roots and took delight in playing the ...

180. George 'Gabby' Hayes

Actor | Randy Rides Alone

American character actor, the most famous of Western-movie sidekicks of the 1930s and 1940s. He was born May 7, 1885, the third of seven children, in the Hayes Hotel (owned by his father) in the tiny hamlet of Stannards, New York, on the outskirts of Wellsville, New York. Hayes was the son of ...

181. Eddy Waller

Actor | The Grapes of Wrath

Eddy Waller worked in vaudeville and the theater before he entered movies in 1936. Within a few years he was being cast in character parts. In the 1940s he would be a mainstay in the westerns of Republic Pictures and would work with just about every cowboy actor from Tim Holt to Rocky Lane. With ...

182. Murray Hamilton

Actor | Jaws

Murray Hamilton was one of those character actors whose face would be familiar to most movie buffs at an instant, yet his name may not. That's a shame, because Hamilton was one of the most versatile and prolific of performers who was never anything less than completely convincing in any role he ...

183. Edmund Gwenn

Actor | Miracle on 34th Street

There are very few character actors from the 1930s, '40s or '50s who rose to the rank of stardom. Only a rare man or woman reached the level of renown and admiration, and had enough audience appeal, to be the first name in a cast's billing, a name that got marquee posting. Charles Coburn comes to ...

184. Monty Woolley

Actor | The Man Who Came to Dinner

Large and hearty Monty Woolley was born to privilege on August 17, 1888, the son of a hotel proprietor who owned the Marie Antoinette Hotel on Broadway. A part of Manhattan's elite social circle at a young age, he studied at both Yale (Master's degree) and Harvard and returned to Yale as an English...

185. Charles Lane

Actor | You Can't Take It with You

Mean, miserly and miserable-looking, they didn't come packaged with a more annoying and irksome bow than Charles Lane. Glimpsing even a bent smile from this unending sourpuss was extremely rare, unless one perhaps caught him in a moment of insidious glee after carrying out one of his many nefarious...

186. Sheldon Leonard

Producer | Make Room for Daddy

Sheldon Leonard was born in New York City's lower Manhattan, the son of Jewish parents. He studied acting at Syracuse University and, after graduating, landed a job on Wall Street. Following the Wall Street crash of 1929, he found himself unemployed and resolved to become a professional actor on ...

187. Isabel Jewell

Actress | Gone with the Wind

Isabel Jewell, like other actresses in Hollywood in the 1930s, suffered from chronic typecasting. The diminutive, platinum-haired daughter of a doctor and medical researcher seemed to be often playing hard-boiled, tough-talking broads: gangster's molls, dumb blondes, prostitutes and, of course, ...

188. Mary Nash

Actress | The Philadelphia Story

When her Hollywood career began in 1934, Mary Nash was already a veteran performer, having appeared in vaudeville and on Broadway. Following a brief appearance as a dancer in 1904, she joined Ethel Barrymore in a 1905 off- Broadway production, 'Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire'. This was followed by 'Captain ...

189. Halliwell Hobbes

Actor | You Can't Take It with You

Born at Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-on-Avon, Halliwell Hobbes could perhaps not aspire to anything else but to be an actor. He made his stage debut in 1898 playing Shakespearean repertory with the famous acting company of Sir Frank Benson throughout England. Among others he played opposite ...

190. Herbert Mundin

Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood

Herbert Mundin was born on August 21, 1898 in St. Helens, Merseyside, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), David Copperfield (1935) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). He was married to Ann Shaw and Hilda Frances Hoyes. He died on March 5, 1939 in Van Nuys, ...

191. Anne Revere

Actress | Gentleman's Agreement

Veteran character actress Anne Revere became another in the long line of talented artists whose careers would crash under the weight of the "Red Scare" hysteria that tore through Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. Born in Manhattan and a direct descendant of Revolutionary War figure Paul Revere, ...

192. Bruce Bennett

Actor | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Herman Brix was a star shot-putter in the 1928 Olympics. After losing the lead in MGM's Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) due to a shoulder injury, he was contracted by Ashton Dearholt for his independent production of The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935), a serial and the only Tarzan film between the ...

193. Alma Kruger

Actress | Saboteur

Matronly or grandmotherly, Alma Kruger appeared onscreen between 1935-47. She was 64 years old when she made her film debut in William Wyler's These Three (1936). She then proceeded to appear in over 40 films in the space of little more than a decade, appearing in, among others, Mother Carey's ...

194. Billy Bevan

Actor | Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Billy Bevan's show-business career began in his native Australia, with the Pollard theatrical organization. The company had two theater troupes, one which toured Asia and the other traveling to North America. Bevan wound up in the latter, performing in skits and plays all over Canada and Alaska ...

195. Eugene Iglesias

Actor | Hiawatha

Iglesias was a prolific supporting actor found in many Hollywood westerns of the 50s and 60s. He was born Eugene Luis Francisco Iglesias Carrillo in San Juan, Puerto Rico, said to have come from a distinguished family with connections to José Luis Alberto Muñoz Marín, the first elected governor of ...

196. Emilio Fernández

Writer | La perla

Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez Romo is the most famous person in the history of Mexican movies. For an era he symbolized Mexico due to his violent machismo, rooted in the Revolution of 1910-17, and because of his staunch commitment to Mexican cultural nationalism. Born to a Mexican (Mestizo) father ...

197. Charles Coleman

Actor | Poor Little Rich Girl

Charles Coleman was born on December 22, 1885 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was an actor, known for Poor Little Rich Girl (1936), It Started with Eve (1941) and Becky Sharp (1935). He was married to Beatrice. He died on March 8, 1951 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

198. Arthur Treacher

Actor | Mary Poppins

Born Arthur Veary Treacher in Brighton, East Sussex, England, he was the son of a lawyer. He established a stage career after returning from World War I, and by 1928, he had come to America as part of a musical-comedy revue called Great Temptations. When his film career began in the early 1930s, ...

199. Burgess Meredith

Actor | Clash of the Titans

One of the truly great and gifted performers of the century, who often suffered lesser roles, Burgess Meredith was born in 1907 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was educated in Amherst College in Massachusetts, before joining Eva Le Gallienne's Student Repertory stage company in 1929. By 1934 he was a star ...

200. Sterling Holloway

Actor | The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Popular American character actor of amusing appearance and voice whose long career led from dozens of highly enjoyable onscreen performances to world-wide familiarity as the voice of numerous Walt Disney animated films. Born in the American Deep South to grocer Sterling P. Holloway Sr. and Rebecca ...