Trivia: Pressured into an acting career by her ambitious parents, Mary Astor was a silent film star before she was 17 -- a tribute more to her dazzling good looks than anything else. Debuting in The Beggar Maid (1921), Astor appeared opposite John Barrymore in 1923's Beau Brummell with whom she had a romantic relationship and later starred with in Don Juan (1926), Anxious not to be a victim of the talking-picture revolution, the actress perfected her vocal technique in several stage productions for Edward Everett Horton's Los Angeles-based Majestic Theatre, and the result was a most successful talkie career. Things nearly fell to pieces in 1936 when, in the midst of a divorce suit, Astor's ex-husband tried to gain custody of the couple's daughter by making public a diary she had kept. In this volume, Astor detailed her affair with playwright George S. Kaufman; portions of the diary made it to the newspapers, causing despair for Astor and no end of embarrassment for Kaufman. But Astor's then-current employer, producer Sam Goldwyn, stood by his star and permitted her to complete her role in his production of Dodsworth (1936). Goldwyn was touched by Astor's fight for the custody of her child, and was willing to overlook her past mistakes. Some of Astor's best films were made after the scandal subsided, including The Maltese Falcon (1941), in which she played the gloriously untrustworthy Brigid O'Shaughnessy opposite Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade, and The Great Lie (1941), in which she played a supremely truculent concert pianist (and won an Academy Award in the bargain). Seemingly getting better as she got older, Astor spent the final phase of her career playing spiteful or snobbish mothers, with one atypical role as murderer Robert Wagner's slow-on-the-uptake mom in A Kiss Before Dying (1956). A lifelong aspiring writer, Astor wrote two entertaining and insightful books on her career, My Story and A Life on Film. Retiring after the film Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1966), Astor fell victim to health complications and financial tangles, compelling her to spend her last years in a small but comfortable bungalow on the grounds of the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital.

Trivia: Orphaned as a child, Kansan Doro Merande grew up in boarding schools. She was in her early twenties when she impulsively decided to become a New York actress. Her skinny frame and wavering voice making her ideal for rural character roles, Doro went on to appear in 25 Broadway plays, most famously as the old lady who "loved weddings" in the original 1938 production of Our Town. This was the part that brought her to Hollywood in 1940. Though she preferred to remain in New York, Doro was seen in dozens of Hollywood-based TV and movie character roles, including the loudmouthed housekeeper in The Gazebo (1959) and the strident "victim" of Soviet "invaders" in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966). In 1960, Doro was one of the stars of the TV sitcom Bringing up Buddy; reportedly, all chances for this series' success were sabotaged by the fact that Ms. Merande and her co-star, silent film veteran Enid Markey, openly despised one another. In her last professional years, Doro Merande was a frequent guest star of The Jackie Gleason Show.