She was Maid Marian's devoted lady-in-waiting. She survived encounters with the Invisible Man and the Frankenstein Monster. And she worked for the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Billy Wilder. She was rubber-faced character actress Una O'Connor, once dubbed the movies' "quintessential town biddy."
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One of the most thankless recurring roles in movies must have been as one of Charlie Chan's would-be detective offspring. After all, how many ways can an actor say "Gee whiz, pop!"? For the venerable Keye Luke, however, playing "number-one son" Lee Chan was an early stepping stone in a film and TV career that last nearly 60 years.
Born in Guangzhou, China in July, 1904. Luke came to the U.S. at age three when his family settled in Seattle. He moved to Hollywood as a young man and worked, not as an actor, but as a commerical artist and technical advisor on Asian-themed films. Luke's artwork was featured in RKO's pressbook for the original King Kong, and he painted murals and the auditorium ceiling for Graumann's Chinese Theatre.
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It is, to borrow a phrase from one of his better-known movie roles, "inconceivable" that filmgoers of all ages aren't familiar with at least the voice, if not the leprechaun-like face, of comedic mainstay Wallace Shawn. Fans of art films know him as a favorite cast member for the likes of Woody Allen and Alan Rudolph, Gen-Xers remember him as the scheming Vizzini in The Princess Bride or as debate teacher Mr. Hall in Clueless, and kids will recognize his voice as that of Rex, the not-so-terrifying Tyrannosaurus from the Toy Story films. Acting, however, is just one part of Shawn's mutli-faceted career.
In a movie like 1980's Airplane!, where the jokes are zooming past viewers at a rate of several per minute and the starring cast includes veteran stars the likes of Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielsen and Robert Stack, it takes a special kind of performer to make a lasting impression in a supporting role. However, that's just what comic actor Stephen Stucker did in the role of the manic and--oh, how shall we say it?--flamboyant airport control room worker Johnny.
Amid the taboo-shattering and polymorphously perverse chaos that is the John Waters universe, she was an oasis of...well, if not sanity, then certainly an off-kilter form of niceness. Few who have seen the director's landmark 1972 "exercise in poor taste," Pink Flamingos, can look at an order of deviled, hard-boiled or sunny-side-up eggs without thinking of the snaggletoothed grin, cackling laugh and one-in-a-million line delivery that were hallmarks of "Edie the Egg Lady," Edith Massey.
It's a rare accomplishment for an actor or actress to receive an Academy Award nomination for their very first film appearance. It's even more rare for that first appearance to come at the rather advanced (for Hollywood) age of 61! But that's just what happened to Sydney Greenstreet, whose, shall we say, imposing presence and air of sophisticated menace served him well in a relatively brief nine-year career packed with memorable characters.
Jason Marcewicz | Scene Stealers
One of the most recognizable character actors of the past three decades has to be Mike Starr. With his hulking 6'3" frame Mike cuts an imposing figure. As a result, much of his TV and film work have typecast him as a heavy, usually the muscle of mobsters. Says Mike: “I get a lot of calls for New York-oriented things, mob parts, cop roles. I think they stereotype me by size; that's a bit of a pitfall. Some people bring me in for the big gentle guy or these killers. It's hard to figure out what they think of me.”
But Mike’s versatility as an actor has not gone totally unnoticed by casting agents; nor by us movie geeks.
Iconic low-budget filmmaker Roger Corman is famous for the array of top directors--among them James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante, Ron Howard, and Martin Scorsese--who got some of their first breaks working for him at the American International and New World studios. But when it came to on-screen talent, one of the longest and most diverse careers to emerge from those humble B-movie breeding grounds must be that of craggy-faced actor Dick Miller, a Corman regular who would become a "good luck charm" for many of those future auteurs and a cult favorite.
"I was never the 'babe,' so I knew I'd never get those big roles. I'd always be the best friend or the quirky sidekick." So said comedienne/actress Joan Cusack about a body of work that has garnered her many fans (including, in spite of the comment, her fair share of male admirers) and two Academy Award nominations, all for following in the Hollywood tradition of Joan Blondell, Eve Arden, Thelma Ritter, and others known for playing the heroine's wisecracking gal pal.
She wasn't born into high society, but you'd never know it from most of her film appearances. With her nose firmly in the air, her upper-class dignity was constantly under attack by the relentless comic assaults of Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and sometimes Zeppo Marx. But for the indomitable Margaret Dumont, it was all in a day's work...even if she claimed to never get what was so funny.
She was born the Brooklynite Daisy Juliette Baker in October, 1882, and grew up in the south as the goddaughter of "Uncle Remus" author Joel Chandler Harris. While still in her teens she changed her name and began a stage career as an actress/singer, but gave it up after marrying a well-to-do sugar heir in 1910. Dumont returned to the boards following his death, and had her first film role as, appropriately, an aristocrat in a silent version of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.
Of character actors it is often said, "I can't remember the name, but the face is familiar." That saying may have never been truer than in the case of Vincent Schiavelli, whose sad-eyed, hangdog features allowed him to easily move between comedic and dramatic roles and who was regularly seen in movies and on TV for over 35 years.