Conrad Nagel
(The Mysterious Lady)

(March 16, 1897 – February 24, 1970) was a successful American screen actor and matinee idol of the silent film era and beyond. He was also a well known television actor and radio performer.

Born in Keokuk, Iowa, USA, into an upper middle-class family, he was the son of a musician father who was a locally praised singer. Nagel's mother died early in his life, and he always attributed his artistic inclination to growing up in a family environment that encouraged self-expression.

After graduating from Highland Park College at Des Moines, Iowa, Nagel left for California to pursue a career in the relatively new medium of motion pictures where he garnered instant attention from the Hollywood studio executives. With his six foot tall frame, blue eyes, and wavy blond hair; the young Midwestern Nagel was seen by studio executives as a potentially wholesome matinee idol whose unpretentious all-American charm would surely appeal to the nation's nascent film-goers.

Nagel was immediately cast in film roles that cemented his unspoiled lover image. His first film was the 1918 retelling of the Louisa May Alcott classic Little Women, which quickly captured the public's attention and set Nagel on a path to silent film stardom. His breakout role came in the 1920 film The Fighting Chance opposite Swedish starlet Anna Q. Nilsson. In 1928 he starred with Garbo in The Mysterious Lady.

On May 11, 1927 Nagel was among 35 other film industry insiders to found the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS); a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures. Fellow actors involved in the founding included: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Richard Bartholomew, Jack Holt, Milton Sills, and Harold Lloyd. He served as president of the organization from 1932 to 1933. He was also a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).

In 1927, Nagel starred alongside Lon Chaney, Sr., in the now lost Tod Browning directed horror classic London After Midnight. The film is quite possibly the most famous and talked about lost film ever.

Unlike so many silent films stars of the Roaring Twenties, Conrad Nagel had little difficulty transitioning to talkies and spent the next several decades being very well received in high profile films as a character actor. He was also frequently heard on radio and made many notable appearances on television.

From 1937 to 1947 he hosted and directed the radio program Silver Theater. Later on, from 1949 to 1952 he hosted the popular TV game show Celebrity Time.

In 1940, Nagel was given an Honorary Academy Award for his work with the Motion Picture Relief Fund. He was the host of the 3rd Academy Awards ceremony held on November 5, 1930, the 5th Academy Awards on November 18, 1932, and a co-host with Bob Hope at the 25th Academy Awards ceremony on March 19, 1953. The 21-year gap between his appearances in 1932 and 1953 is a record for an Oscar ceremonies host.

In 1970, Nagel died in New York City and was cremated at Garden State Crematory in North Bergen, New Jersey. For his contributions to film, radio, and television, Conrad Nagel was given three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1719 Vine Street (Motion Pictures), 1752 Vine Street (Radio), and 1752 Vine Street (Television).

Asta Nielsen
(The Joyless Street)

Born Asta Sofie Amalie Nielsen (September 11, 1881 – May 24, 1972), also known as Die Asta, was a Danish actress, mostly appearing in German silent films during the 1910s and 1920s.

She was nicknamed The Silent Muse. She was born in Vesterbro, Copenhagen to a coppersmith father and a washerwoman mother. They both died before she was fifteen.

She studied acting at the Royal Theatre School of Copenhagen. She became the most famous stage actress across Scandinavia while she toured.

In 1909, director Urban Gad encouraged her to become a silent screen actor and she starred in the 1910 film Afgrunden ("The Abyss"). The film was a success so she was encouraged to continue making silent films. In 1926 she co-starred with Garbo in G.W. Pabst classic The Joyless Street.

Nielsen and Gad soon married and then moved to Germany because her talent was not understood by Danish film industry. She worked in film until talkies became popular, continuing acting only on stage. In 1936, she left Germany for good, settling in Denmark where she was unemployed for almost the rest of her life.

She is considered to be a great movie actress because of her talent of adapting her performing style in accordance with the demands of the film media avoiding theatrical manners. Besides, she was able to play women of extremely various social positions as well as of different psychology. She was married five times.

She died in 1972.

Salka Viertel
(Anna Christie)

She was born Salome "Salka" Steuermann (1889 –1978) was an actress and screenplay writer.

Much has been discussed of Viertel's relationships and friendships with actresses Greta Garbo  and Marlene Dietrich as well as writer Mercedes de Acosta. Although many rumors have suggested these relationships as lesbian, the nature of her close ties with both Garbo and Dietrich have never fully been disclosed.

She was rumored to have been involved in an affair with writer Mercedes de Acosta, whom she introduced to Garbo at her home in 1931. Salka co-starred with Garbo on the German language version of Anna Christie.

Garbo and de Acosta shortly thereafter became involved in a rumored relationship that would last for several years.

Viertel was married to Berthold Viertel and they had three sons, one of whom, Peter Viertel, is also an accomplished book and screenplay writer.

She also wrote a memoir The Kindness of Strangers which was published in 1969.

She died in Klosters, Switzerland, on October 20, 1978. She co-wrote the scripts for many movies, particularly those starring her close friend Greta Garbo.

Marie Dressler
(Anna Christie)

Dressler (1868 - 1934) was an Academy Award-winning Canadian actress.

Born Leila Marie Koerber in Cobourg, Ontario to parents Alexander Rudolph Koerber (who was Austrian) and Anna Henderson.

Being a rather overweight child, she spent a lot of time developing the defense mechanisms many overweight children become skilled at.

The young Marie Dressler was able to hone her talents to make other people laugh, and at 14 years old she began her acting career in theatre. In 1892 she made her debut on Broadway. At first she hoped to make a career of singing light opera, but then gravitated to vaudeville.

During the early 1900s, she became a major vaudeville star.

In 1919, during the Actors' Equity strike in New York city, the Chorus Equity Association was formed and voted Dressler its first president.

In 1927, she had been secretly blacklisted by the theater production companies due to her strong stance in a labor dispute. It would turn out to be another Canadian who gave her the opportunity to return to motion pictures, MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer who called her "the most adored person ever to set foot in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio."

A robust, full-bodied woman of very plain features, Marie Dressler's comedy films were very popular with the movie-going public and an equally lucrative investment for MGM.

Although past sixty years of age, she quickly became Hollywood's number one box office attraction and stayed on top for two straight years. In addition to her comedic genius and her natural elegance, she also demonstrated her considerable talents by taking on serious roles. In 1939 she co-starred with Garbo in Anna Christie.

For her starring portrayal in Min and Bill, co-starring Wallace Beery, she won the 1931 Academy Award for Best Actress.

Her career came to an abrupt end when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

MGM head Louis B. Mayer learned of Dressler's illness from her doctor and asked that she not be told. To keep her home, he ordered her not to travel on her vacation because he wanted to put her in a new film. Dressler was furious but complied.

In all, Marie Dressler appeared in more than 40 films but only achieved superstardom near the end of her life. Always seeing herself as physically unattractive, she wrote an autobiography, The Life Story of an Ugly Duckling.

Marie Dressler died in Santa Barbara, California 1934.

Charles Bickford
(Anna Christie)

(In Treatment)

Gerda Lundeqvist
(Gösta Berling Saga)

(In Treatment)

Mona Martensson
(Gösta Berling Saga)

(In Treatment)

Einar Hanson
(The Joyless Street)

(In Treatment)

Lionel Barrymore
(The Temptress, Mata Hari, Grand Hotel and Camille)

Lionel Barrymore (USA 1878– 1954) was an American actor of stage, radio and film.

He was the elder brother of Ethel and John Barrymore. He started his stage career in the early 1900s. After many years spent in Paris, in 1907 he came back to Broadway, where he established his reputation as dramatic actor. In 1924 he left Broadway for Hollywood.

He was Garbo's co-star four times. In The Temptress (1926)  Mata Hari (1931), Grand Hotel (1932)  and Camille (1936).

In 1931 he won an Oscar for his role of an alcoholic lawyer in A Free Sole (1931). Although he could play many types of characters, such as the evil Rasputin in the 1932 Rasputin and the Empress, he was, during the 1930s and 1940s, stereotyped as grouchy, but usually sweet, elderly men.

Barrymore died on November 15, 1954 from a heart attack. He is the great-uncle of actress Drew Barrymore.

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr
(A woman of Affairs)

Douglas Elton Fairbanks, Jr (1909 – 2000) was an American actor and a highly decorated naval officer of World War II. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was born in New York City, the son of actor Douglas Fairbanks.

His parents divorced when he was ten years old. He lived with his mother in California, Paris, and London. He was also noticed by Joan Crawford who began to date him.

On June 3, 1929, at City Hall in New York, New York Crawford and Fairbanks were married. He was technically underage, so one year was added to his birth (giving him 1908 as his year of birth) and Crawford shed three years from her age, which would remain shed until long after her death, giving her the same year of birth that Fairbanks had created for himself, 1908.

He became active in both society and politics, but Crawford was far more interested in her career and her new affair with Clark Gable. The couple was divorced in 1933.

Fairbanks starred in several pre-Code films with Loretta Young, and supported Katharine Hepburn in her Oscar-winning role in the film Morning Glory (1933). With Little Caeser, Outward Bound, Gunga Din and The Dawn Patrol, his movies began to have more commercial success.

In 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed him a special envoy to South America. Although celebrated as an actor, Fairbanks most enduring legacy was a well-kept secret for decades. At the onset of World War II, Fairbanks was commissioned a Reserve Officer in the U.S. Navy and assigned to Lord Mountbatten's Commando staff in England.

He died of a heart attack in New York at the age of 90. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California, in the same crypt as his father.

Ruth Gordon
(Two-Faced Woman)

Ruth Gordon Jones (1896 – 1985), better known as Ruth Gordon, was an Academy Award-winning American actress and writer. She was perhaps best known for her films roles such as the oversolicitous neighbor in Rosemary's Baby and the eccentric cradle-robbing Maude in Harold and Maude.

In addition to her acting career, Gordon wrote numerous well known plays, film scripts and books. Gordon went briefly to Hollywood, appearing in a string of films in the early forties before becoming disillusioned and returning to New York to act in and write plays.

In 1941 she starred next to Greta in Two-Faced Woman. In 1966, Gordon was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe award as Best Supporting Actress for Inside Daisy Clover opposite Natalie Wood. It was her first nomination for acting. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Rosemary's Baby.

Many of her later roles found their appeal in the juxtaposition of her deceptively aged, diminutive form (she was 5'1") with her vigorous, off-beat, plucky determination.

Upon winning the 1968 Academy Award, at the age of 72, and more than a half a century after her film debut, she exclaimed in her inimitable style, "I can't tell you how encouraging a thing like this is, for a young actress like myself."

Harold and Maude and Adam's Rib have both been selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress' National Film Registry.

Béla Lugosi
(Ninotchka)

Béla Lugosi was the stage name of actor Béla Ferenc Dezso Blaskó (1882 – 1956). He was born Hungary.

The blue-eyed actor is best known for his portrayal of Dracula in the American Broadway stage production, and subsequent film, of Bram Stoker's classic vampire story.

Lugosi started his acting career on the stage in Hungary in several Shakespearean plays and other major roles, and also appeared in several silent films of the Cinema of Hungary. Lugosi left his native Hungary for Germany in 1919 and he began appearing in a small number of well received films in German cinema.

Lugosi emigrated to the United States in 1920. On arrival in America, the 1.85 m (6 feet 1 inch), 82 kg (180 lb) Lugosi worked for some time as a laborer, then returned to the theater within the Hungarian-American community. He was approached to star in a play adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. The production was successful.

Despite his excellent notices in the title role, Lugosi had to campaign vigorously for the chance to repeat his stage success in Tod Browning's movie version of Dracula (1931), produced by Universal Pictures. Following the success of Dracula (1931), Lugosi received a studio contract with Universal.

In 1939 he starred next to Greta in Ninotchka (1939), it was one of his biggest hits. Bela  made films until he died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956 while lying in bed in his Los Angeles home. He was 73.

Basil Rathbone
(Anna Karenina)

Basil Rathbone (13 June 1892 – 21 July 1967) was an English actor most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, and of suave villains in swashbuckler films.

He was born Philip St. John Basil Rathbone in Johannesburg, South Africa, to English parents: Edgar Philip Rathbone and Anna Barbara George. A younger sister and brother, Beatrice and John, rounded out the family. The Rathbones fled to England when Basil was three years of age after his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy near the onset of the Second Boer War.

During the 1920s, Rathbone appeared in Shakespearean roles on the British stage. He was in a few silent movies, and played detective Philo Vance in the 1929 movie The Bishop Murder Case.

Rathbone rose to fame playing suave villains in costume dramas and swashbucklers of the 1930s, including David Copperfield (1935), Anna Karenina (1935), The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), Captain Blood (1935), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) Tower of London (1939), and The Mark of Zorro (1940).

Rathbone earned Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performances as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936), and as King Louis XI in If I Were King (1938).

A Hollywood legend is that Rathbone was Margaret Mitchell's first choice to play Rhett Butler in the film version of her novel Gone with the Wind.

In the 1950s, he appeared frequently on TV game shows, and had a substantive role in John Ford's political drama The Last Hurrah (1958). Rathbone also acted on Broadway numerous times.  Through the 1950s and 1960s, he continued to appear in several dignified anthology programs on television.

To pay the bills, he unfortunately also had to take jobs in films of far lesser quality. His last film was a Mexican horror cheapie called Autopsy of a Ghost (1968).

Meanwhile, his Sherlock Holmes portrayal became iconic to newer generations through frequent repetition of the Holmes films on late-night television.

Basil Rathbone has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; one for motion pictures at 6549 Hollywood Boulevard; one for radio at 6300 Hollywood Boulevard; and one for television at 6915 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

Basil Rathbone died of a heart attack in New York City in 1967 at age 75. He is interred in a crypt in the Shrine of Memories Mausoleum at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

SOURCES
Paul Page
Ken Wlaschin Great Movie stars and their films.
Conversations and Recollections/ Daum,
descriptions on Time and Life magazines.