It’s a well known fact that in the hey day of the studio system the studios usually signed similar actors to “back up” their main stars.

It seemed like an insurance policy. If the star became temperamental he or she could be replaced by the second stringer.  And sometimes the second stringer would become a valuable asset on his or her own.

Recognize today’s second stringer, a backup to the enormously popular child star Shirley Temple?  Why, she’s Jane Withers, and she definitely had a style all her own.

Withers was a sort of second banana at 20th Century Fox. (She is outstanding as that nasty brat — nearly upstaging Temple — in 1934′s Bright Eyes.)

Talk about being a child performer. She began on radio at age three, often featuring impersonations of such big stars as W.C. Fields and Charlie Chaplin. During the 1930′s, she established herself with such titles as Pepper and Angel’s Holiday, finishing the decade with a punch by being named No. 6 on a list of top 10 box office favorites. She was just 11 years old at the time.

Withers went on to a career lasting nearly 70 years (remember, she started very young) and covering some 71 credits.  Withers was also an accomplished singer, and tv personality — best known for her “Josephine the Plumber” character in those 1970′s cleanser commercials.

Perky, vivacious and pretty curvy too. One of our favorite “second stringers.”

We admit it.  This quiz is a toughie.  Perhaps the first question should be, who the hell is Constance Collier?

One thing for sure, she made her mark in movies at quite an advanced age. She was born in England way back in 1878, and didn’t arrive in Hollywood until she was 57.  Even then she took Tinseltown in two phases: the first during the silent film era and, nearly a decade later, the second from 19356 until 1950.  By 1955 she was gone — dead at the age of 77.

Fact is that Collier was a far more celebrated as a stage actress in England and the U.S. rather than as a movie personality. The only child of professional actors, she graced the stage for the first time — in was in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream — at age three. By the time she was a teenager Collier was a tall standout in singing and dancing roles and in the now forgotten art of elocution.

Three years before making her U.S. stage debut she married she married her one and only husband, British actor and performing partner Julian Boyle (a handsome devil who went under the name of “Julian L’Estrange”). The childless union lasted until his death of influenza in 1918.

During her second stage tour of the U.S. in 1916, Collier found herself playing in four silent films including an uncredited turn as an extra in D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. It was not until the early Thirties that Collier emerged as a strong player in mainstream studio pictures.

Ok, let’s get to our Constance Collier Quiz, and see how much you remember about this accomplished actress. As usual questions today, answers tomorrow.

1) Question: When Collier first arrived in Hollywood in the late 1920′s she was NOT employed as an actress.  For which of the following occupations was she hired?  a) Irving Thalberg’s secretary; b) A costume designer; c) A script supervisor; or d) A voice coach.

2) Question: Collier is perhaps best remembered for her supporting role in which one of the following Alfred Hitchcock films?  a) Shadow of a Doubt; b) Rope; c) The Paradine Case; or d) Spellbound.

3) Question: The photo below shows Collier with a distinguished British actor who starred in producer David Selznick’s 1936 production of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Can you identify him. (Hint: his name begins with an initial.)  

4) Question: Which of the following did Collier NOT appear with onscreen?  a) Bob Hope; b) Shirley Temple; c) Betty Hutton; or d) Ginger Rogers.

5) Question: Katherine Hepburn, once a protege of Collier’s, wound up becoming  lifelong friend. a) True; or b) False.

Do you remember ever seeing a film starring Sonny Tufts? If not, we can’t blame you.

Tufts didn’t have an extensive career — just a little more than 30 credits over a quarter century — and is now best recalled as a male version of bad girl Barbara Payton (pictured below), his costar in a low-budget 1953 comedy, Run For The Hills.

That is, his private life was far more entertaining that his big screen work.

Things didn’t start out that way.

The actor was born Bowen Charlton Tufts III to an aristocratic Boston family of impeccable class credentials. After attending prep school Tufts enrolled at Yale where he studied opera.  His studies turned serious, and in time Tufts auditioned for New York’s Metropolitan Opera company before opting instead for vocalizing on the Broadway stage.

Then the big guy (Tufts stood 6-foot-4) found himself auditioning for Paramount, which signed him up in the early Forties. His first outing, as the love interest of Paulette Goddard in 1943′s So Proudly We Hail, received favorable reviews, and his screen career was off and running. Tufts was welcomed in Hollywood by the wartime scarcity of leading men.

Tufts nursed an old college football injury, which relieved him of serving in World War II, and found himself loaned out to RKO for the 1944 comedy, Government Girl, starring Olivia DeHavilland. The movie has been savaged by critics over time but it was a hit, and put Tufts on course to be a leading man. He was voted in 1944 the number one “Star of Tomorrow” by movie theater exhibitors.

But then Tuft’s offscreen hijinks intruded.  The actor drank like a fish, and his alcoholism got him into all sorts of troubling situations. In the late Forties he had been found drunk on a Hollywood sidewalk.   In the mid Fifties, a stripper accused him of biting her left thigh while he and two friends visited her home. A 19-year-old dancer later claimed Tufts had allegedly bitten her, on the right thigh this time, while partying on a yacht in Newport Beach.

Tufts married only once — to Spanish dancer Barbara Dare — and his wife at one point had him jailed for drunkenness.  The end of their 16-year marriage came in 1953.  “He drinks too much and lives too lavishly,” said his ex.

But let’s not forget that Tufts despite all personal distractions he put some decent credits on the board. He appeared in 1944′s Here Come the Waves, a hit due largely to the presence of Bing Crosby and Betty Hutton. He sang a year later in the musical comedy Bring on the Girls, with Eddie Bracken and Veronica Lake. He tried a western, 1946′s The Virginian, landed a star part in 1946′s Swell Guy opposite Ann Blyth. John Farrow directed him in 1947′s Blaze of Noon, shortly after which Tufts left the Paramount fold.

Work then came increasingly hard to come by as a result of Tuft’s multiple drunken shenanigans although his career received a small boost when he was cast in a small supporting role in Billy Wilder’s 1955 comedy The Seven Year Itch starring Marilyn  Monroe.

Perhaps Tuft’s most lasting screen legacy is Cat-Women of the Moon, a low budget, sci-fi B movie that has become a cult favorite of sorts. Two of our favorites, Marie Windsor and Victory Jory, costar with Tufts. There’s our man (below) goofing off with actress Brenda Hogan. Tufts died in 1970 at the relatively young age of 58.

How much did you know about Don DeFore?

One thing you should keep in mind is that he is better remembered today as a tv actor than big screen personality.  But we don’t hold that against him.

From 1952, DeFore was an integral part of the ABC-TV sitcom, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. He played “Thorny,” the Nelson’s friendly neighbor, a role that won him an Emmy nomination in 1955.

Pictured above is the Nelson family with DeFore shown second from the right, flanked by David Nelson. Ricky Nelson and his parents are to Defore’s left (as we look at the photo).  Yes, the Nelson’s were a real couple.  Ozzie was a former bandleader, popular on radio, and wife Harriet (Hilliard) was the band’s singer. Ricky and David virtually grew up on the highly successful series.

In the early Sixties, Defore found himself as a prominently featured player on the NBC-TV sitcom Hazel, starring Shirley Booth as a maid who runs the family she works for.  Defore played “Mr. B.,” Hazel’s employer.

OK, on to the answers to our Don Defore Quiz.

1) Question: DeFore didn’t often get to slap around his leading ladies but does so in 1949′s Too Late For Tears, a celebrated film noir in which he manhandles a very nasty Lizabeth Scott. a) True; or b) False. (P.S. That’s Scott holding Don at bay below.)

1) Answer:  b) False.  Although DeFore portrays an ambiguous character of dubious virtue, he doesn’t get a chance to manhandle star Scott.  Her character is smarter and far more insidious than his.  Scott is slapped around in the picture by costar Dan Duryea, famous for playing nasty thugs who do such things. (Offscreen, Duryea was a family man and real pussycat.)

2) Question: Although he was passed over as “not star material” by at least two studios. DeFore was in the mid Forties was voted among the top five “stars of tomorrow” by national movie exhibitors.  a) True; or b) False.

2) Answer: a) True.

3) Question: Which one of the following did DeFore NOT costar with on the big screen? a) Jerry Lewis; b) Spencer Tracy; c) Van Johnson; or d) Tyrone Power.

3) Answer: d) Tyrone Power.  DeFore appeared with Tracy and Johnson in 1944′s Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, and with Lewis in 1949′s My Friend Irma.

4) Question:  DeFore’s most prominent tv role was in a sitcom involving a former bandleader.  Can you name him and the name of the show?

4) Answer:  See introduction above.

5) Question: DeFore was highly active in official industry organizations related to film and tv.  Which of the following was he NOT involved in?  a) National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences; b) Actors Equity; c) American delegate to the Moscow Film Festival; or d) Screen Actors Guild.

5) Answer: b) Actors Equity, the stage performers’ union.  DeFore at one time or another was active in all other organizations.

Every once in awhile we like to dig up some old snapshots from our files and from The Donald Gordon Collection.

You might well ask, just who is Donald Gordon, and how did we come by his stash of great photos?

John Madden, our late pal and fellow classic movie-lover, bequeathed to Joe a veritable treasure trove of informal, impromptu black-and-white photographs that more than anything we can think of provide informal, personalized glimpses of Hollywood in its Golden Age. Donald Gordon and John were close friends.

Before he died Donald gave John this marvelous cache of photos. These snapshots are the kind that are often taken at parties, outings and family events of one kind or another.

But these were not the usual shots of unrecognizable or forgotten relatives at their leisure. No, the subjects in these snapshots were – and perhaps still are — some of the most recognizable faces on the planet. And in most shots there is also Donald Gordon.

Donald was a young actor who found himself under contract at Columbia Pictures during World War II.

The amazing informality – almost intimacy – of Donald with his subjects is a pleasure to behold.  No posed studio shots in full makeup, staged with the precision of a Swiss watch.  These were shots of some of Hollywood’s best-known personalities in mufti, so to speak, lounging around pools, front lawns, departing restaurants or in actual costume on the set.

The photographs evoke a smaller, more neighborly and much different Hollywood – before television became a mass medium, decades before videos and DVDs, and an eternity away from the internet and the many digital platforms of today.

Celebrityhood hadn’t quite become the national obsession it is today. There were no paparazzi as such (by the way, which film inspired that descriptive term?) and access to the highest-level stars was made possible by being a member of a studio family, as Donald was.

His snapshots reveal a sunnier, more relaxed, more human Hollywood.  It’s not too grandiose to suggest that they capture precious moments in time.

Now on to today’s mystery subjects.

No need to identify these people… Stars all!