Nine Tough Movie Dames

This would have been Ten Tough Broads, except that Google continues to deny me access to any photo links. Hopefully when daughter returns from a trip, she'll be able to straighten things out for me. The photos I've used on this post were stored by me in a file a while back.

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9 Tough Broads.

You know who I mean - movie dames so tough they spit bullets. Not the major stars who were known for their impenetrable on-screen veneer: Toughies like Joan Crawford (the toughest of them all, merely a lift of those indelible eyebrows was enough to get a hernia going ), Bette Davis (no slouch herself, less obvious than Joan, she had The Voice that could eviscerate a man at twenty paces) Barbara Stanwyck (she had honed the sneer to perfection), even Jane Russell and Lana Turner.

All were tough movie dames. All were stars of the first tier. Broads of the first water. (And I mean that in the best possible way.)

But today's post is about some second tier toughies, all battle-scarred (figure of speech), all veterans of the double-cross, all wise to the use of the coup de grace, all fine-tuned to the ways of men.

My nine are just not as well known as the stars I listed above, they are nine who didn't quite make it into the Abestos Hall of Fame.

I had added Rita Hayworth to the stars mix, but then decided she was tough, yeah, but she was too soulful, too often the object of heartbreak, too glammed up to commandeer a sub-machine gun and take out a nest of bad guys (or good) without chipping a nail. Same for Ava Gardner.

The following, then, are my choices for the toughest of the tough - women with dollar signs for hearts, women who think nothing of flipping off the geek who served them with devotion, think nothing of scorning true love for great sex. Women who could shoot to kill with and without a gun, but never without a manicure.Women who were occasionally good enough, but more often bad enough.

Now before anyone takes umbrage or accuses me of besmirching the memory of a good woman, I am ONLY talking about the screen presence of these beautiful creatures who were born, more or less, to slink their way into bad-girl movie history. Maybe not strictly Hall of Fame material, but close enough.

Gloria Graham

Gloria Graham was and always will be (at least for me) the epitome of the tough broad. She just had that sleepy look about her that told you a thing or two without uttering a word. She had a tough as nails glossy exterior and a low-key way of making herself understood, speaking softly, barely without
moving her mouth. (I believe she'd had some kind of surgery that had gone wrong or something. But it just added to her on-screen allure.)

Even when she played good, she played bad, if you know what I mean. No one would ever mistake her for a member of the PTA - at least on screen. Borderline sleazy, she was really quite wonderful in just about anything she did. She had the strange ability to make men quiver and yet, women liked her. Go figure.

To learn about Gloria Graham and her films, please use this link.

Marie Windsor

Now, Marie Windsor was a different kettle of...uh, fish. She wasn't breaking her heart over anyone - she was there to stomp on hearts and to hell with the debris. I know no woman who can honestly say they liked Marie on-screen. Her film persona was just too brittle, too hard-edged. You'd pour your soul out to her and she'd sell you down the river for a couple of dollars and some bling.

Can't help it, that's the impression she always gave. She meant business with a capital B. In films she was usually the gal friend of the swarthy guy who owned the local gambling hall, nightclub, bar, dance hall, carnival or strip joint. Though in the end she was usually left holding the bag while the head honcho went on to greener pastures with the young innocent do-gooder who'd caught his jaded eye, you knew Marie would live to connive another day. The cigarette in the fancy holder told you that much.

Marie had been around the block one too many times and often looked it. She had a steely glitter in her googly eyes which would, of course, instantly put another woman on guard. Not that it actually ever got her anywhere, since in most movies she usually wound up dead or dumped. But while she had the upper hand, she enjoyed the heck out of it.

I'll bet in reality she was a sweetheart, but we're talking film persona now.

To learn about Marie Windsor and her films, please use this link.

Jan Sterling

Poor Jan Sterling, she was almost always doomed to play dumb but shifty. I don't think I ever saw her in a movie where there was much going on behind the sultry, vacant stare. (As my daughter would say, the hamster must have left the wheel untended.)

Jan's characters were always ready to believe anything a man told them and were cruelly disappointed (every damn time) when the inevitable double-cross landed her in the gutter (literally, in UNION STATION), in the arms of the law or on a slab in the morgue.

You had to feel sorry for her, you really did. The minute she slinked onscreen, it was 'uh-oh' watch out, this one's gonna' get it. All you had to do was wait for the inevitable. And every single time it came as a total surprise to Jan. I think it was all the peroxide.

To show you how the camera can distort reality, Sterling was born to a well-to-do family and educated in Europe. So much for verisimilitude.

To learn about Jan Sterling and her films, please use this link.

Joan Blondell

Joan Blondell was always the hussy with the heart of gold. She was tough, she could dish it out, she knew the score, but when push came to shove, she did what the second banana usually did, she took the fall for the leading lady who usually had much less on the ball than she did. But again, it was the screen persona.

Even when she wasn't really a gold-digger, Warren Williams thought she was and treated her like it. Even when she was just there as girl-friend back-up to Carole Landis, Joan is the one who gets killed instead. True, she comes back as a ghost to frolic with Topper (in TOPPER RETURNS) and hunt for her killer, but still...

Joan always looked as if she worked at the local burlesque joint and didn't care who knew it. Yet she had a motherly vibe about her that made it impossible for anyone to dislike her.

She seemed to know every snappy one-liner ever written and wasn't shy about spitting them out. I loved Joan in just about anything she was ever in. She had a fabulous way of looking ditzy but you knew, deep inside, she was figuring the angles. With the fussy Warren Williams in GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, she shared one of the best screen kisses ever. Yeah, believe it or not - Warren Williams. Who'd of thunk it? He fell hard for her. Who wouldn't?

To learn about Joan Blondell and her films, please use this link.

Audrey Totter

Audrey Totter had a way of popping her eyes (most on display in her famous close-up in THE LADY IN THE LAKE with Robert Montgomery as Phillip Marlowe) that eventually turned her into a caricature of herself. I could never take her seriously as a femme fatale (but I'm a woman and I wasn't meant to) and yet, she nearly always played one onscreen. She looked tough as nails without even trying, vulnerable was a reach for her.

On screen, Audrey Totter had a straight arrow spine and unyielding body posture - a combo which can be kind of romantically intimidating. Actually, this sort of thing is intimidating in real life as well. She also had a dissatisfied curl to her lip which instantly raised your hackles.

According to Wikipedia, Miss Totter is still live at the age of 93 and I say more power to her. Lots of these saucy dames lived and are living to ripe old ages which only goes to show you that playing bad on screen must be good for your health.

To learn about Audrey Totter and her films, please use this link.

Lizabeth Scott

In my view, one of the more beautiful of the tough movie broads. She had a sexy, sultry voice to die for. I like to think that with a voice like that I could have conquered not only Hollywood, but half of Europe as well. Ah, dream on, Yvette.

Scott had a reclusive quality, a loner vibe which is what I think kept her from big time Hollywood Stardom. (That and some of the movies she was in.) She looked self-contained and perfectly complacent on her own even when she was supposed to be clinging to her male lead. She also had a 'touch me not' quality which went rather well with her don't come hither beauty. In other words, she was an on-screen enigma.

She gave the cool appearance of perhaps not being being worth the trouble it would take to keep her. There's more to life than being 'sultry', but 'sultry' was Lizabeth Scott's modus operandi. She also had a way of gobbling up the camera so that when she was on screen you didn't notice much else.

For me, she was and always will be, the 'I don't care' girl. I always thought she should have been a bigger star. (Yes, I know about the rumors. But surely that couldn't have been the reason. Not in Hollywood.)

To learn about Lizabeth Scott and her films, please use this link.

Hillary Brooke in JANE EYRE

Hillary Brooke was never tougher (or more coldly alluring) then in her role as Blanche Ingram, the gold-digging 'gentle-lady' from the estate  next door, on the make for Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester in the form of Orson Welles. I mean, her hard-edged indifference was scary.

She would have made a good vampire. But I don't think she ever played one.

In general Hillary Brooke played society types, often British, though she was American born. Her stock in trade was an  icy coolness which served her well in the roles of women who meant to get their own way in life, by hook or by crook - she made business suits look sexy. For whatever reason, Brooke's beauty never lifted her above the role of character actress and she appeared in many films and on television over the years, usually as the steely blond femme - fatale or otherwise.

Somehow, she played foil to Abbott and Costello in a couple of their movies and on their TV show. Hollywood makes for strange bedfellows.

To learn about Hillary Brooke and her films, please use this link.

Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino was a rarity down at the Division of Tough Broads. She could slide into the role of slightly used night club chanteuse just come in from slithering around the block as easily as she could play the caring and beleagured ingenue in THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES.

She all but breaks our hearts in the part of the blind girl who falls for Robert Ryan's rough detective in need of redemption in ON DANGEROUS GROUND.

But when Lupino played a hard dame, there were no two ways about it, she was as hard a dame as ever two-timed a movie he-man. Fortunately or unfortunately, she always had a way of looking smarter than the hero.  "I was the poor man's Bette Davis" she once said.

Later in her career, Ida Lupino became that rarity for film actresses then and now, a director.

To read more about Ida Lupino and her films, both as actress and director, please use this link.

Jane Greer and Robert Mtchum

Now we come to a really, REALLY tough broad, every one's favorite deceitful dame, Jane Greer. I saw her recently with Richard Widmark in RUN FOR THE SUN where she played a good enough type, a magazine writer looking for a story who goes to some Latin American country and gets more than she bargained for. Not a very good film and Richard Widmark, not the best actor Hollywood ever produced, is plain awful. As usual, he was good to look at though....But I digress.

Jane Greer always looked as if she knew something nobody else in the movie knew. She appeared wise beyond her years, wise in the ways of men and the wicked, wicked world. She knew every trick, knew how to put her beauty to good use. She was a belle dame sans merci - for sure.

She had a disgruntled, impatient quality, as if there wasn't anything a man could do to win her favor short of showering her with dough and when that became boring, take the blame for her evil misdeeds. She also  had a way of making you feel as if none of it was ever her fault.

Here was a dame didn't seem to mind using a gun if the need arose, as it does in OUT OF THE PAST, her memorable film noir duet with Robert Mitchum - as tough a male presence as Hollywood ever produced. Yet in OUT OF THE PAST, Mitchum plays the sap to Greer's Lady Macbeth routine.

Hard to believe that Greer was once married to crooner Rudy Vallee. I kid you not.

To learn more about Jane Greer and her films, please use this link.

So, what do you movie mavens think of my list? I know it's vastly incomplete, but I plan on more posts (once google gets its act together) and I'm also working on a My Favorite Villains post. So, as I like to say - stay tuned.

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10 More Fabulous Character Actors

Eric Blore (1887 - 1959)

The squinchy faced, oh-so terribly English Eric Blore appeared in over 80 Hollywood films, usually playing a butler or some variation thereof. He had the kind of face one would always remember and he made good use of it. I remember him most from the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films. He came across as a sweety with a devilish glint in his eye.

Blore, born in London, had an active career mostly in comedy, though he did play in several dramas as well.

To learn more about Eric Blore, please use this link.

Nigel Bruce (1895 - 1953)

Of course, Nigel Bruce will be remembered as Dr. Watson to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes, until the end of time. But he did play other roles. He was in two of Alfred Hitchcock's most memorable films, SUSPICION and REBECCA. He also played the portly Prince of Wales in THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL with Leslie Howard.

Bruce was the son of an English Baron and oddly enough was born in Mexico. He served in WWI, receiving 11 bullet wounds in one leg for his trouble. A brave man and a terrific actor. He is immortalized on screen as Dr. John Watson.

To learn more about Nigel Bruce, please use this link.

James Robertson Justice (1907 - 1975)

The multi-lingual (he spoke as many as 20 languages) James Robertson Justice was born in South London and studied science in school. Early on he became a journalist for Reuters and from there went on to various and sundry jobs, including a stint as a hockey coach. He served in WWII and was wounded. 

It wasn't until 1944, that he began acting in films.

He was an imposing physical presence, helped along by his aggressive, booming voice - a voice with resonance. I remember him as the 'invalid' Crackenthorpe in MURDER SHE SAID with Margaret Rutherford to whom, in the film, he makes a hilarious proposal of marriage.

He also played the part of Little John in the 1952 film, THE STORY OF ROBIN HOOD AND HIS MERRIE MEN, in which Richard Todd played Robin Hood.

To learn more about James Robertson Justice, please use this link.

Robert Armstrong (1890 - 1973)

Speaking of immortality, when Robert Armstrong starred along with Fay Wray in the original KING KONG, I wonder if he realized that he'd forever be associated with not only KONG, but two other films featuring a gigantic ape: THE SON OF KONG and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG. But life is funny that way, especially in the movie biz.

He did, though, work in over 150 films over his long career, usually playing a brash professional man. I loved him best in MIGHTY JOE YOUNG as the brash nightclub impresario who realizes the error of his ways. He helps Terry Moore and Ben Johnson break Mighty Joe out of jail and escape (in a truck) on a wild ride into the night where a burning orphanage is waiting.

To learn more about Robert Armstrong, please use this link.

Alice Pearce (1917 - 1966)

Alice Pearce was a rubbery faced character actress who is probably best known as the next door neighbor, Gladys, in BEWITCHED. A role cut short (she played it for about a year and a half) by Pearce's death from ovarian cancer at the age of 48. Though Sandra Gould took over the role and played if for years, it's Alice Pearce I always remember as Gladys.

I also loved her in ON THE TOWN where she played a girl on a blind date with Gene Kelly - he is pining after Vera-Ellen. Kelly brought Pearce (who'd played the same part in the Broadway production) over to the film. His scenes with Pearce are really rather sweet.

Needless to say, Alice Pearce died too young.

To learn more about Alice Pearce, please use this link.

C. Aubrey Smith (1863 - 1948)

Far as I'm concerned, C. Aubrey Smith was the standard by which all older British officers (on film) should be judged. He was perfection as that self-same officer of the old school - hale, hearty, principled, upright, uptight, stiff-upper-lipped, things strictly by the book. But he could also play a bemused and elderly father or grandfather type. Smith was always one of my favorite actors as I began to watch and appreciate him in the older films showing up on early television.

He was not only an actor, he was also a famed cricketer. Of course he was part of the British clique busy colonizing Hollywood in the 1930's and early 40's. He was intensely patriotic and critical of those English actors who did not immediately head for Britain to enlist during the war.

He appeared in many classic films, including THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, THE FOUR FEATHERS, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, ANOTHER THIN MAN, TARZAN THE APE MAN (in which he played Jane's father) and many others. I remember him fondly in one of my favorite films, FIVE CAME BACK, where he played a professor forced to make a tragic decision in the end of the film.

To learn more about C. Aubrey Smith, please use this link.

Hillary Brooke (1914 - 1999)

Hillary Brooke was one of the more beautiful actresses of her day and yet that beauty never really made her star. I think it was because the camera picked up some essential coldness (which may not have even been apparent in reality).

Though she was born in Astoria, Queens, NY, she usually played British. She brought a sophisticated, aristocratic bearing to almost every role she played over her long career which included television. She had the duty of playing Lou Costellos' love interest (?!) on the old Abbott and Costello Show. She'd also played the comic foil to the duo in a couple of their films.

She was in several of Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes movies and I also remember her in MINISTRY OF FEAR with Ray Milland, as the sinister fortune teller. Hillary Brooke was always effective at radiating mystery.

To learn more about Hillary Brooke, please use this link.

Horace MacMahon(1906 - 1971)

If you needed to cast a cop, then Horace MacMahon was probably at the top of your list. He had the look and the gravelly voice to suit. He was always my idea of the perfect, work weary, seen-it-all NYC cop.

In his early career he played thugs and mostly bad guys, but later he came into his own as the Lieutenant in the play, DETECTIVE STORY. He went on to play the part in the film as well, alongside Kirk Douglas and Eleanor Parker.

He also starred in the television show, NAKED CITY, as Lieutenant Mike Parker. But he also showed up in many films as the cop, usually in fedora and tweed overcoat. He had the best New Yorkese kind of accent, though he was born in Norwalk, Connecticut. He did go to school at Fordham and he was a newspaper reporter (among many other jobs), so maybe that accounts for the Runyon-esque talk and walk.

To learn more about Horace MacMahon, please use this link.

Erik Rhodes (1906 - 1990)

Erik Rhodes enhanced any film he was ever in and he usually made more of the part he was playing simply by being unafraid to be ridiculous. He is one of my all time favorite actors and I always remember smiling when he showed up on the screen - he just had that effect on me.

In his first film, THE GAY DIVORCEE (1934), he repeated the role he'd played on Broadway, that of Rudolfo Tonetti, an absurdly transparent and very Italian divorce 'correspondent'. His job is to be found in Ginger Rogers' hotel room by her husband - the only action for divorce in those prehistoric times.

There is a famous sequence on the steps of the seaside hotel where Tonetti is given the secret pass word he is to use so that Ginger Rogers will recognize him. The actual words are (I think) "Fate is the fool's name for chance." You can only imagine what Tonetti makes of it. (My favorite: "Fate is foolish, give me a chance.") It is hilarious. Tonetti is part fool, part serious working man (with a union!) and part romantic being duped by his own wife. By the end of the film you adore him as much as you do Fred Astaire.

Rhodes also went on to play in TOP HAT, another Astaire and Rogers film. He played a fashion designer with designs on his model, Ginger Rogers. Hilarity ensues when they all show up in Venice and everyone mistakes everyone else for someone else.

After his work in Army Intelligence during WWII, Erik Rhodes went back to Broadway and later, television work beckoned. Despite his European appearance and manner, Rhodes was born in Oklahoma (when it was known as 'Indian Territory') and died there in 1990, of pneumonia.

To learn more about Erik Rhodes, please use this link.

I've just realized that this is the second time I've written about Rhodes in my continuing series on great character actors. Sorry about that if you noticed. If you didn't notice then pretend you're not reading this.

P.S. If you check google for info on Erik Rhodes, be careful. It seems that there's a porn star with the same name and some of the pix that show up are rather offensive.

And before you begin lamenting that I've left out your favorite, all I ask is that you please check my previous character actor posts. Scroll down a bit and you'll find the link on my right hand side-board. Thanks.

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10 More Characters Actors We've Always Loved

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Henry Daniell (1894 - 1963) could do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. He and Zucco (see next) were two of my very favorite bad guys par excellence. There was nothing on Daniell's face but smarmy, supercilious insolence. That glorious face of his was incapable of 'not sneering.' He really did look wonderfully like a codfish. I adore him. Even if whenever I write about him, I have to hisssss.....!

He was cool, calm and oh-so-sinister as Professor Moriarity to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes.

To learn more about Henry Daniell - hssssss....! - please use this link.

George Zucco (1886 - 1960) is every one's idea of malevolence in the grand tradition. The only thing he lacked was the twirling mustache. I loved the guy. When  Zucco came on screen you immediately said, 'uh oh' and waited for the worst to happen.

He was perfection too as Professor Moriarity to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes.

In fact, the few times Zucco played a benign character, I still kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

To learn more about George Zucco, please use this link.

Paul Cavanaugh (1888 - 1964) Since we're talking basic smarmy. Here's the guy who epitomized the word. Cavanaugh is the universal face of weak charactered second leads. He could be charming in a perfectly surface way - just enough unctuousness to imply his true nature was anything but.

In TARZAN FINDS A MATE, he not only appears naked but actually makes a play for Jane. No wonder Tarzan didn't look upon him with a happy face.

To learn more about Paul Cavanaugh, please use this link.

Walter Connolly (1887 - 1940) has always been my idea of the pompous, high-blood-pressured, society father of the bride. He could also play a great newspaper editor-in-chief and any corporate head of any conglomerate you might imagine.

I guess his role as Claudette Colbert's millionaire papa in IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT implanted itself in my subconscious. He was wonderful.

To learn more about Walter Connolly, please use this link.

Elsa Lanchester (1902 - 1986) is most famous for her screech and her hairdo in THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN though she could also be wonderfully gentle and self-effacing in her screen roles.

She was married to famed British actor, Charles Laughton (1899 - 1962) and occasionally worked with him, as in WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION. Not a woman of conventional good looks, she could appear quite glamorous in one role, then show up as a plain-jane housefrau in the next.

To learn more about Elsa Lanchester, please use this link.

Barton MacLane (1902 - 1969) was the gruff bad guy in almost every western I saw as a kid. His gravel voice and sinister, snarly look made him the perfect choice to play the menacing saloon owner or the leader of a gang of cattle rustlers or bank robbers. Any general purpose bunch of loutish cowboy varmints would probably have MacLane as its head. He could also, occasionally, play a cop.

To learn more about Barton MacLane, please use this link.

Woody Strode (1914 - 1994) was the essential, quietly looming, physical presence. He was implacable, stalwart and occasionally deadly.  He was not a man to be trifled with. That look of his made you immediately understand that he meant business.

My favorite of his many roles was always the honorable SERGEANT RUTLEDGE. He stole the movie from Jeffrey Hunter and the rest of John Ford's familiar cast.

To learn more about Woody Strode, please use this link.

Ward Bond (1903 - 1960) was an actor who, early on, worked mostly for John Ford in his epic westerns and often beside John Wayne. He played many sleazy bad guys, but could also play the good-hearted sidekick. He achieved a level of stardom in later years as the star of the TV series, WAGON TRAIN.

Another actor with a wonderfully gravelly speaking voice, he was the personification of the 'the big lug' in many of his roles.

To learn more about Ward Bond, please use this link.

Jeanette Nolan (1911 - 1998) was a hard working, versatile actress who began her long career playing a variety of parts, but mostly personified the doting grandma as she got older.

But she could also play nasty and underhanded despite her harmless appearance.

She was married to fellow character actor, John McIntire for 56 years, until his death.

To learn more about Jeanette Nolan, please use this link.

Lee Van Cleef (1925 - 1989) was the ultimate, steely-eyed, chiseled cheekbones, bad guy in tons of 50's and 60's westerns. He also achieved some level of stardom (unusual for a villainous character actor) in the occasional spaghetti western in the 1960's.

He had the slinky appearance, usually dressed in black, of the hard-living, sinister gun fighter who relished his role as arbiter of death.. I would have loved to have seen him playing against type sometime, but I don't think I ever did.

To learn more about Lee Van Cleef, please use this link.

If you don't see your favorites, then please check my previous two posts before you begin lamenting. I might have included them there. But fear not, if I didn't, they might be coming up in a future post.

This is my third entry in a series about My Favorite Character Actors, that I've begun to do monthly.

To read the previous two posts, please use this link and secondly, this link.

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Casting Call: 10 More Character Actors We've Known and Loved. (At least in films.)

Photo: Walker Evans.

Movie faces all come from a heavenly organization - run by the gods of fate - known as Central Casting. All of the following actors were - by some twist of fate - born with faces and talents that could reliably, year after year, be inserted into a film in support of stars who were usually better known and better looking. But not always.

These actors all have one thing in common: they all fulfilled a certain 'look,' a certain type.

You want a maid for such and such a picture, get so and so. You want a cop? Get so and so. You want a henchman? Get so and so.  You want a gangster? You want a ditzy housewife? You want a crazed murderer? You want a goofy professor? Get so and so and so and so...and so on and so on.

Those were the days.

I've already written a post regaling the work of ten of the best character actors ever. You can read it here, at this link.  (In case you were wondering where Charles Lane and Edward Everett Horton are, they're in this first post.)

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Ten more superb Golden Age character actors:

1) Lionel Atwill (1885 - 1946).

I love the English actor, Lionel Atwill in his Charlie Chan pictures. Whenever he shows up on screen, you immediately suspect something nefarious is up. Yet, on the rare occasions when he played a good guy - he was able to do that with heart. Most especially as the local police magistrate, Inspector Krogh - he of the missing arm - in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN. It was an iconic performance.

Maybe about to announce the end of the world?

2) Roscoe Karns (1891- 1970).

If you were making a picture and wanted a wise-cracking henchman, cop, reporter, or just general weisenheimer, American actor Roscoe Karns was your man. He had the perfect craggy face, voice and delivery and the best know-it-all, world weary look.

 Karns starred in his own TV show in the fifties, playing private detective Rocky King.

Roscoe Karns and Clark Gable, probably in It Happened One Night (1934).

3) Erik Rhodes (1906 - 1990)

Erik Rhodes majored in empty headed gigolos. He always gave off a very continental air, though he was born in Oklahoma. In THE GAY DIVORCEE he played the feckless Italian divorce correspondent, Rudolfo Tonetti, hired to compromise Ginger Rogers - to hasten her divorce from as unlikely a husband as a Ginger Rogers character ever had.

In TOP HAT, Rhodes played Alberto Beddini, a clueless fashion designer who wants to marry his model, Ginger Rogers. My favorite line in the film is sung by Beddini as he gazes into a mirror: "Oh Beddini, I'm so glad you're not skinny." Ha! Everything Rhodes did was funny. He just had that sort of persona.

Three 'greats': Erik Rhodes, Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore.

4) Una O'Connor (1880 - 1959)

Once seen, never forgotten. The Irish actress, Una O'Connor, solidified her screen presence in The Invisible Man, as the finicky, dithery, screechy and very frightened pub owner's wife.

But she was also quite wonderful as Maid Marian's (Olivia de Havilland) lady-in-waiting in The Adventures Of  Robin Hood, and wore some gorgeous costumes to boot.

Olivia de Havilland and Una O'Connor in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).

5) Ian Hunter (1900 - 1975)

Though born in South Africa, Ian Hunter, personified for me, the typical stalwart Englishman. He could play the lawyer, the doctor, the professor, the soldier, the best friend or the conniving blackmailer with just the slightest twitch of his photogenic face.

Though not as well-known as many other character actors working at this time, he will always and forever be in my heart as Richard the Lionheart alongside Errol Flynn in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. He appears in my favorite scene in the movie, as a king just back from the Crusades, stealthily meeting up with Robin and his band of merry men in Sherwood Forest. From that moment on (for me) all kings in films were measured against Hunter's calm, confident, aristocratic and utterly gorgeous monarch.

Ian Hunter as King Richard in The Adventures of Robin Hood.

6) Jack Elam (1920 - 2003)

If you wanted sleazy, most especially if you wanted ugly, sinister, cruel and sleazy, then Jack Elam was your man. For many years, this actor's face meant uh-oh, whenever he showed up on screen, usually in westerns but occasionally in noir crime flicks.

He'd lost an eye in an accident when he was a boy, and this loss gave his face a kind of lop-sided unevenness which only added to his almost comically sinister appearance. No good could come of a situation once Jack Elam entered the scene. His grin alone made me shiver. We always whooped it up whenever he got his comeuppance in a movie.

That unforgettable sinister stare.

7) Walter Brennan (1894 - 1974)

Walter Brennan was another ubiquitous character actor who seemed to show up in every movie ever made, kind of like Charles Lane, but more well known. Brennan's roles were usually bigger than Lane's, both working around the same time. Brennan was a type - the old (even when he was young) geezer with or without his dentures - the grandfather, the sidekick, the homesteader, the prospector, the wrangler, the old sea salt or, in some cases, the grizzly bad guy. Without his teeth, he often looked vulnerable and much older than he actually was.

Walter Brennan was the recipient of three Academy Awards - all for Best Supporting Actor.

8) Mary Wickes (1910 - 1995)

Another memorable face. She played a great nurse and did it often. She was also a great housewife neighbor, a busy-body gossip, a long suffering secretary, a teacher or better yet, a principal...well, you name it, Mary Wickes could handle it. I remember her best from her first role as a nurse in The Man Who Came To Dinner.

Among the many films, Wickes worked on, I also remember her with Abbott and Costello in Who Done It? Later, on television, she worked with good friend Lucille Ball on several of her shows plus many others.

Such a look. Such bedside manner.

9) Jerome Cowan (1897 - 1972)

The poor man's aristocrat. He could play the conniving second lead as well as anyone. He could also play it straight and had a nice comedic touch. As Miles Archer in the film classic, The Maltese Falcon, he was Sam Spade's (Humphrey Bogart) sleazy, murdered partner.

He played snobby publishers and literary types very well. He had that look about him that said he knew about books and might occasionally, even read one. When I thought eastern literati, Jerome Cowan sprang to mind. There was an aura of weakness in his face that I think, kept him from making the leap to leading man. But boy could he deliver a funny, sparkling line.

Cowan always looked relaxed in black tie.

10) James Gleason (1882 - 1959)

Another actor seemingly born to play New York cops with short fuses. He was always the grumbly sort who apparently never appeared without a hat. Gleason co-wrote an Academy Award winning film, The Broadway Melody, before he evolved into a busy character actor. He co-starred in six Hildegarde Withers films beginning with The Penguin Pool Murders.

A disbelieving cop in Arsenic and Old Lace.

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