Joan Bennett was an American stage, film, and television actress. She came from a show-business family, one of three acting sisters. Beginning her career on the stage, Bennett appeared in more than 70 films from the era of silent movies, well into the sound era.
Bennett's career had three distinct phases: first as a winsome blonde ingenue, then as a sensuous brunette femme fatale (with looks that movie magazines often compared to those of Hedy Lamarr), and finally as a warmhearted wife-and-mother figure.

In 1951, Bennett's screen career was marred by scandal after her third husband, film producer Walter Wanger, shot and injured her agent Jennings Lang. Wanger suspected that Lang and she were having an affair, a charge which Bennett adamantly denied. She married four times.

Dame Gladys Cooper, DBE was an English actress, theatrical manager and producer, whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films, and on television.

As a teenager in Edwardian musical comedy and pantomime, she starred in dramatic roles and silent films before the First World War.
My Fair Lady (1963)

Jeremy John Irons (born 1948) is an English actor and activist. After receiving classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons began his acting career on stage in 1969 and has appeared in many West End theatre productions, including the Shakespeare plays The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew and Richard II.
In 1984, he made his Broadway debut in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and he received a Tony Award for Best Actor.

Irons's first major film role came in the romantic drama The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981). After starring in dramas, such as Moonlighting (1982), Betrayal (1983), and The Mission (1986), he was praised for portraying twin gynaecologists in David Cronenberg's psychological thriller Dead Ringers (1988).
Irons has won multiple awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor, for his portrayal of the accused attempted murderer Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune (1990).

Already trained in dance and theater, Webb quit school at age 13 to study music and painting. By 19 he was a professional ballroom dancer in New York, and by his mid-twenties he was performing in musicals, dramas on Broadway and in London, and in silent movies.
His first real success in film came in middle age as the classy villain Waldo Lydecker in Laura (1944), followed by the part of Elliott Templeton in The Razor's Edge (1946) - both of which won him Oscar nominations.

His priggish Mr Belvedere in a series of films was supposedly not far removed from his fastidious, finicky, fussy, abrasive and condescending real-life persona. He was inseparable from his overbearing mother Maybelle, with whom he lived until her death at 91, six years before his own death.
The recent success of Titanic (1997) created brief interest due his having appeared with Barbara Stanwyck in the 1953 version of the story.

His elegant taste kept him on Hollywood's best-dressed lists for decades. His scrupulously-private gay life has also been respective one to his personality as a true gentleman.

Margaret Dumont (1882 - 1965) was an American stage and film actress. She is best remembered as the comic foil to the Marx Brothers in seven of their films. Groucho Marx called her "practically the fifth Marx brother."
In 1925, Dumont came to the attention of theatrical producer Sam H Harris who recommended her to the Marx Brothers and writer George S Kaufman for the role of the wealthy dowager Mrs Potter alongside the Marxes in their Broadway production of The Cocoanuts. In the Marxes' next Broadway show Animal Crackers, which opened in October 1928, Dumont again was cast as foil and straight woman Mrs Rittenhouse, another rich society dowager. She appeared with the Marxes in the screen versions of both The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930).

With the Marx Brothers, Dumont played wealthy high-society widows whom Groucho alternately insulted and romanced for their money:


The Cocoanuts (1929) as Mrs Potter,
Animal Crackers (1930) as Mrs Rittenhouse,
Duck Soup (1933) as Mrs Gloria Teasdale,
A Night at the Opera (1935) as Mrs Claypool,
A Day at the Races (1937) as Mrs Emily Upjohn,
At the Circus (1939) as Mrs Susanna Dukesbury,
The Big Store (1941) as Martha Phelps

Irene Dunne ( 1898 - 1990) was an American actress and singer who appeared in films during the Golden Age of Hollywood. She is best known for her comedic roles, though she performed in films of other genres.

She performed in musicals on Broadway until she was scouted by RKO and made her Hollywood film debut in the musical Leathernecking (1930). She starred in 42 movies and in popular anthology television, and made guest appearances on radio until 1962; she was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress—for her performances in Cimarron (1931), Theodora Goes Wild (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Love Affair (1939), and I Remember Mama (1948)—and was one of the top 25 highest-paid actors of her time.

Until this present day, Dunne is considered one of the finest actresses never to have won an Academy Award. Some critics feel that her performances have been underappreciated and largely forgotten, overshadowed by movie remakes and her better-known co-stars.
Dunne once fled across the Atlantic Ocean to avoid starring in a comedy, but she has been praised by many during her career, and after her death, as one of the best comedic actresses in the screwball genre.
She was nicknamed "The First Lady of Hollywood" for her regal manner despite being proud of her Irish-American, country-girl roots.

Gregory Peck ( 1916 - 2003) was an American actor and one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among 25 Greatest Male Stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema, ranking him at No 12.
Spellbound (1945)
Duel in the Sun (1946)
The Paradine Case (1947)
Roman Holiday (1953)
To Kill a Mocking Bird (1962)
Mirage (1965)
TheOmen (1976)

Fredric March began a career in banking but in 1920 found himself cast as an extra in films being produced in New York. He starred on the Broadway stage first in 1926 and would return there between screen appearances later on.
He won plaudits (and an Academy Award nomination) for his send-up of John Barrymore in The Royal Family of Broadway (1930).
Four more Academy Award nominations would come his way, and he would win the Oscar for Best Actor twice: for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
He could play roles varying from heavy drama to light comedy, and was often best portraying men in anguish, such as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman (1951). As his career advanced he progressed from leading man to character actor.

Scottish-born Finlay Currie was a former church organist and choirmaster, who made his stage debut at 20 years of age. It took him 34 more years before making his first film, but he worked steadily for another 30 years after that.
Although he was a large, imposing figure, with a rich, deep voice and somewhat authoritarian demeanor, he was seldom cast in villainous parts. He received great acclaim for his role as Magwitch in Great Expectations (1946)

Sir Alec Guinness (1914 - 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which he played nine different characters, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination, and The Ladykillers (1955).
He collaborated six times with director David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won both the Academy Award for Best Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor, Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984).
In 1970 he played Jacob Marley's ghost in Ronald Neame's Scrooge. He also portrayed Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy; for the original 1977 film, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 50th Academy Awards.

Charlie Chaplin, (1889, London - 1977, Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland), British comedian, producer, writer, director, and composer who is widely regarded as the greatest comic artist of the screen and one of the most important figures in motion-picture history.

As the Little Tramp, Chaplin had mastered the subtle art of pantomime, and the advent of sound gave him cause for alarm. After much hesitation, he released his 1931 feature City Lights as a silent, despite the ubiquity of talkies after 1929. It was a sweet, unabashedly sentimental story in which the Little Tramp falls in love with a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill) and he vows to restore her sight. The musical score, the lone "sound" element the film offered, was composed by Chaplin, and he conducted its recording; no matter the lack of dialogue, it was a huge success.

In 1932 Chaplin began a relationship with young starlet Paulette Goddard. His next film, Modern Times (1936), was a hybrid, essentially a silent film with music, sound effects, and brief passages of dialogue. Chaplin also gave his Little Tramp a voice, as he performed a gibberish song. Chaplin played a nameless factory worker who has been dehumanized by the mindless task he has to perform—tightening bolts on parts that fly by on an assembly line; Goddard played "A Gamin," the waif who comes under his wing. It was the last silent feature to come out of Hollywood, but audiences still turned out to see it. Most significantly, it was the Little Tramp's final performance.

The Great Dictator (1940) was Chaplin's most overt political satire and his first sound picture. Chaplin starred in a dual role as a nameless Jewish barber and as Adenoid Hynkel, Dictator of Tomania—a dead-on parody of German dictator Adolf Hitler, to whom Chaplin bore a remarkable physical resemblance. Goddard played Hannah, the barber's Jewish friend, who flees Tomania after the barber is arrested and sent to a concentration camp, and Jack Oakie gave a hilarious impersonation of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini as Napaloni, Dictator of Bacteria.
The japing tone of the picture's lampooning was a movement away from Chaplin's usual poetic approach; The Great Dictator was simply too bitter and too outraged to permit much in the way of gentle comedy. The film did well at the box office, and he received his only Academy Award nomination as best actor.

Chaplin took another five years to launch his next film, the melancholy Limelight (1952). He played Calvero, a music-hall idol whose day has passed, and British actress Claire Bloom costarred as Terry, a ballet dancer whom Calvero saves from a suicide attempt; he shelters, encourages, and finally helps elevate her to the top of her profession, even as his own star dims and then blinks out.
Chaplin's half brother Sydney and his son Charlie Jr both had small parts, and silent comedy star Buster Keaton had a key role as a theatre pianist who watches Calvero expire. (Limelight would be given an Oscar for its score, to which Chaplin contributed, in 1973, after the film finally received the requisite release in Los Angeles.)

Two-time Oscar-winner Jack Lemmon starred in dozens of films, working until his death in 2001 at the age of 76. But how many of those titles are classics? Let's take a look back at some of his greatest movies.

Lemmon won his first Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for "Mister Roberts" (1955). A second Oscar for Best Actor followed for "Save the Tiger" (1973), making him the first person to pull off victories in both categories. He competed six more times for Best Actor throughout his career ("Some Like It Hot" in 1959, "The Apartment" in 1960, "Days of Wine and Roses" in 1962, "The China Syndrome" in 1979, "Tribute" in 1980, and "Missing" in 1982).

He is perhaps best known for his long collaboration with Walter Matthau, with whom he made 11 films (including his solo directorial outing "Kotch," which earned Matthau a Best Actor Oscar nomination). In films such as "The Fortune Cookie" (1966), "The Odd Couple" (1968), and "Grumpy Old Men" (1993), Lemmon's fastidiousness played beautifully off of Matthau's scruffiness. (So close were the two, in fact, that Lemmon died almost exactly one year after Matthau did.)

Bibi Andersson (1935 - 2019),ionally as Bibi Andersson (Swedish: [ˈbɪ̂bːɪ ˈânːdɛˌʂɔn]), was a Swedish actress who was best known for her frequent collaborations with filmmaker Ingmar Bergman.
Andersson's intense portrayal of a nurse in the film Persona (1966) - in which actress Elizabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann), suffering from a psychosomatic condition, is mostly mute - involved her delivering the majority of the dialogue. For her performance in Persona, she won the award for Best Actress at the 4th Guldbagge Awards.

Richard Burton, 1925 - 1984, was a Welsh actor noted for his mellifluous baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s, and he gave a memorable performance of Hamlet in 1964.

He was called "the natural successor to Olivier" by critic Kenneth Tynan. A heavy drinker, Burton's purported failure to live up to those expectations disappointed some critics and colleagues and added to his image as a great performer who had wasted his talent. Nevertheless, he is widely regarded as one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation.

Burton was nominated for an Academy Award seven times, but never won an Oscar. By the late 1960s, Burton was one of the highest-paid actors in the world, receiving fees of $1 million or more plus a share of the gross receipts.[ He remained closely associated in the public consciousness with his second wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor. The couple's turbulent relationship was rarely out of the news.

Barbara Stanwyck (1907 - 1990) was an American actress, model and dancer. A stage, film and television star, she was known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional for her strong, realistic screen presence. A favourite of directors including Cecil B DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra, she made 85 films in 38 years before turning to television.

By 1944, Stanwyck had become the highest-paid woman in the United States. She starred alongside Fred MacMurray in the seminal film noir Double Indemnity (1944), playing the smoldering wife who persuades MacMurray's insurance salesman to kill her husband.
Described as one of the ultimate portrayals of villainy, it is widely thought that Stanwyck should have won the Academy Award for Best Actress rather than being just nominated.

Anne Bancroft was born in 1931 in The Bronx, NY. She made her cinema debut in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) in 1952, and over the next five years appeared in a lot of undistinguished movies. By 1957 she grew dissatisfied with the scripts she was getting, left the film business and spent the next five years doing plays on Broadway.
She returned to screens in 1962 with her portrayal of Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker (1962), for which she won an Oscar. Bancroft went on to give acclaimed performances in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Slender Thread (1965), Young Winston (1972), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), The Elephant Man (1980), To Be or Not to Be (1983), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) and other movies, but her most famous role would be as Mrs Robinson in The Graduate (1967).
Her status as the "older woman" in the film is iconic, although in real life she was only eight years older than Katharine Ross and just six years older than Dustin Hoffman.

Bancroft would later express her frustration over the fact that the film overshadowed her other work.

A Streetcar Named Desire



On the Waterfront
Birdman of Alcatraz
The Cincinnati Kid
Hot Millions
                                                                                                                                                       
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Claude Rains has to be considered one of the finest actors of the 20th century. As soon as you hear that marvelous, unmistakable voice of honey mixed with gravel, he becomes instantly recognizable.
And that scornful right eyebrow which could freeze an adversary faster than and more effectively than any physical threat. He stood at a mere 5'6", yet his enormous talent and immense stage presence made him a giant among his colleagues.
During a stage and film career that spanned six decades, Rains encompassed some of the most memorable and exciting characters ever created by an actor. Villains were a Rains specialty, particularly those of a suave and sarcastic nature; and yet when the role called for it, Rains could be remarkably moving and even add a touch of pathos without losing any of his effectiveness.

Often called "The Most Beautiful Woman in Film," Hedy Lamarr's beauty and screen presence made her one of the most popular actresses of her day. She was part of 30 films in an acting career spanning 28 years .

She was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler on November 9, 1914 in Vienna, Austria. At 17 years old, Hedy starred in her first film, a German project called Geld auf der Strase. Hedy continued her film career by working on both German and Czechoslavakian productions. The 1932 German film Exstase brought her to the attention of Hollywood producers, and she soon signed a contract with MGM. .

Once in Hollywood, she officially changed her name to Hedy Lamarr and starred in her first Hollywood film, Algiers (1938), opposite Charles Boyer. She continued to land parts opposite the most popular and talented actors of the day, including Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, and Jimmy Stewart. Some of her films include an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat (1942), White Cargo (1942), Cecil B DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Female Animal (1957).

Shirley Mae Jones (born March 31, 1934) is an American actress and singer.

In her six decades in show business, she has starred as wholesome characters in a number of musical films, such as Oklahoma! (1955), Carousel (1956), and The Music Man (1962). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry (1960).
She played the lead role of Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children, in the musical situation-comedy television series The Partridge Family (1970-1974), which co-starred her real-life stepson, David Cassidy, son of Jack Cassidy.