She was known for possessing the “saddest eyes in Hollywood.” (There she is above looking unhappy opposite Paul Lukas.) She excelled at “victim parts” but tired of being asked to cry on cue.

Sylvia Sidney also had an extraordinarily long career (nearly 70 years), a star in the Thirties and early Forties and then a reinvention as a successful character actress on tv thereafter.  A lifelong smoker (see above), she defied the odds and died in 1999 at the age of 88.

Sidney excelled in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1936 thriller, Sabotage, who as Mrs. Verloc famously takes a carving knife to her nefarious husband played by Oscar Homolka. She was a favorite of director Tim Burton, who cast her in supporting roles in Beetlejuice and Mars Attacks!, the latter her final movie.

Ok, so how much did you know about Sylvia Sidney?

1) Question: Sylvia worked with some of classic Hollywood’s finest directors. Which one of the following is NOT among this select group of Sidney collaborators?  a) Alfred Hitchcock; b) Henry Hathaway; c) Fritz Lang; or d) George Stevens.

1) Answer: d) George Stevens did not work with Sidney.  As mentioned above, she worked with Hitchcock, with Henry Hathaway (1936’s The Trail of the Lonesome Pine), and Fritz Lang (1936’s Fury, his first American film).

2) Question: Sidney was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in which one of the following titles?  a) Damien — Omen II; b) Mars Attacks!; c) Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams; or d) The Trail of the Lonesome Pine.

2) Answer:  Sylvia was nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actress for her work in c) 1973’s Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, directed by Gilbert Cates and starring Joanne Woodward.  Sidney plays Joanne’s mother, who  drops dead in a movie theater, precipitating her daughter’s mid-life crisis.

3) Question:  Sidney had a habit of marrying famous men.  Her three husbands included which of the following?  a) Bennett Cerf; b) Carlton Alsop; c) Luther Adler; or d) Tim Burton.

3) Answer:  a) Bennett Cerf, the pubisher and tv personality, was husband No. 1. Then came actor Luther Adler.  Finally, husband No. 3 was producer Carlton Alsop. Director Tim Burton, at least a generation younger than Sidney, admired Sylvia, and, as mentioned above, cast her in two of his pictures, Beetlejuice and Mars Attacks!. About his one-year marriage to Sidney, Cerf said: One should never legalize a hot romance.

4) Question: Sidney was known for her unusual hobby. What was it?  a) Juggling; b) Pole Dancing; c) Needlepoint; or d) Cigarette smoking.

4) Answer:  Sylvia loved smoking cigarettes, to be sure, but was passionate about c) needlepoint.  She was expert, and wrote two books on the subject in the 1970’s.

5) Question: Sidney made many television appearances later in her career.  Which one of the following series did she NOT appear in?  a) WKRP in Cincinnati; b) Thirtysomething; c) Fantasy Island or d) Life With Father.

5) Answer: Sidney appeared in a ton of tv shows  but not on the Fifties series, d) Life With Father.

Rex Harrison won a Tony in 1957 and later, in 1964, an Oscar for playing Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Ok, you knew that already.

Here are some things you may not know about this major stage and Hollywood star:

— He was born Reginald Harrison in England in 1908.  He later said he changed his first name because Rex is the Latin word for king.

— He started his career in British regional theater, blowing his first one-line part at the Liverpool rep.  He survived, obviously. His first movie, in 1930, a sports comedy titled The Great Game, was filmed in England. His Hollywood days were spent largely at 20th Century Fox.

— He actually won THREE Tony awards.  The first in 1949 for his performance in the drama Anne of a Thousand Days; the second for My Fair Lady; and the third in 1969 designated as a “special Tony Award.”

— He loathed the nickname, “sexy Rexy,” applied to him by the press.

— He played the role of King Mongkut opposite Irene Dunne in 20th Century Fox’ 1946 drama, Anna and the King of Siam. This, of course, evolved thanks to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein into the classic The King and I — starring Yul Brynner.

— He was nominated in the best actor category for his performance in one of the most profligate productions (and perhaps the biggest box office bomb) in movie history — 20th Century Fox’s 1963 mega-extravaganza Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor.

And now a word about Carole Landis (pictured below).

Wisconsin-born Landis, who broke in with bit parts at Warner Brothers, emerged a 20th Century Fox contract starlet in the 1940’s plagued by a disastrous married life (involving four husbands) and a sputtering career. Along the way she had had many well known affairs including flings with Busby Berkeley and Darryl Zanuck.

In mid decade she started an affair with Harrison — at the time he was married to actress Lilli Palmer (a marriage he refused to end).  In July of 1948, Harrison walked into Landis’ home in the Pacific Palisades, and discovered her dead body.

His lover had overdosed on sleeping pills. She was 29 when she killed herself.  Her suicide note asked her mother to “pray for me.” Supposedly, when a maid discovered her body on the bathroom floor, she waited several hours before calling a doctor and the police.

Rumors soon circulated that Landis had left two suicide notes, one for her mother and one for Harrison. But supposedly the actor’s (or the studio’s) lawyers told him to destroy it.

And speaking of Harrison’s second wife, Lilli Palmer (pictured below), she was born in 1914 in Prussia, the daughter of a proper German family — father a doctor, mother an actress — who took to acting early on. She worked in stock and in cabarets until the early Thirties when she was lured to England at the behest of producer Alexander Korda. That liaison didn’t work out especially well but Palmer managed to make her movie debut in 1935’s Crime Unlimited.

After well-received appearances in a series of titles over the late Thirties and into the World War II years — including Alfred Hitchcock’s 1936 thriller The Secret Agent and Carol Reed’s A Girl Must Live in 1939 — Palmer established herself as a European star. Her appearance with husband Harrison in 1945’s The Rake’s Progress sealed the deal.

When Harrison decamped from England to Hollywood, Palmer joined him, remaking herself into a physically striking leading lady of considerable glamour. As British critic David Thomson noted, In Britain, she had looked pretty but ‘European.’ In Hollywood she was turned into a beautiful woman.

While starring in a string of successful titles — including 1946’s Cloak and Dagger from director Fritz Lang and Robert Rossen’s 1947 melodrama Body and Soul opposite John Garfield — Palmer undertook Broadway stage appearances with her husband in Bell, Book and Candle, and then in the film adaptation of the stage hit, The Four Poster.

Harrison divorced Palmer in 1957, and subsequently married four times, notably in succession to actresses Kay Kendall and Rachel Roberts.  He died in New York in 1990, at age 82, of pancreatic cancer.

Do you recognize the man pictured above?

Don’t feel bad if you don’t.  Superlative supporting actors of the classic Hollywood period — which in our man’s case was the 1950’s — immersed themselves so completely in the characters they played, they could have been invisible outside their individual roles.

What, then, makes our man noteworthy? Answer:  rarely has there been a nastier and more believable movie villain than Emile Meyer. His menacing, slightly dumb mug combined with his rasping vocal delivery in a slight Southern drawl supported by his overall physical bulk spelled immediate and very serious trouble.

Born in New Orleans in 1910, Meyer worked a number of sweaty blue-collar jobs (longshoreman, cab driver, safety inspector, etc.) before being “discovered” by director Eli Kazan during the filming of 1950’s Panic In The Streets, which was filmed in the Big Easy.

During the Fifties he played a mix of blue-collar parts — police guard, gas station attendant, bartender, racetrack security guard , small time storekeeper and a plenty of sheriffs — before landing some meaty supporting parts in major films.

Catch him as a cattle baron in director George Steven’s superb 1953 western, Shane. Don’t miss him as the hardassed warden in producer Walter Wanger’s gritty 1954 drama, Riot In Cell Block 11, starring another underrated actor — Neville Brand. And savor his pugnacious turn  as Mr. Halloran in director Richard Brook’s 1955 social commentary/drama for MGM, The Blackboard Jungle.

Frank fell under this fine actor’s spell after repeated viewings of 1957’s The Sweet Smell of Success, starring Burt Lancaster as an unscrupulous and powerful New York newspaper columnist J.J. Hunsecker (inspired by the late Walter Winchell) and Tony Curtis in what is his finest role as the slippery and sycophantic Broadway press agent, Sidney Falco.

Meyer plays a corrupt New York City police lieutenant who violently “chastises” Falco at Hunsecker’s behest. The mocking evil just oozes out of the actor’s interpretation — unforgettable.

Meyer didn’t always play villains. Director Stanley Kubrick cast him as a priest who escorts actor Timothy Carey to his execution in the 1957 World War I drama, Paths of Glory. Meyer played a broad variety of parts on television as his movie career wound down. In all, he is credited with nearly 125 movie and tv parts.

He played a sheriff in his last picture, a forgotten independent feature, 1977’s The Legend of Frank Woods  starring Troy Donahue. Meyer died a decade later of Alzheimer’s disease. He was 76.

He had one of the longest careers in Hollywood. He worked for some of the best directors and opposite some of the biggest stars.

He was known as Bob Cummings.  But for most of his film career he was billed as Robert Cummings.

That was his real name. Though he had tried names such as Blade Stanhope Conway and Bruce Hutchens — in early career efforts to pass himself off as either a Brit or a Texan (certainly not as the Midwesterner he was from Joplin, Missouri) — Robert Cummings was the name that stuck.

He was never in the top tier of leading men, but Cummings had a successful career in movies from the 1930s to the 1960s.  And, he was one of the biggest stars on television in its early days. 

Cummings was also known for his fastidious health regimen.  In 1951, actress Joan Fontaine recalled sharing a chartered airplane ride with the actor to Brazil.

The plane trip was uneventful except that Bob Cumming’s wrist watch would regularly resound through the plane.  He was a vitamin addict and took his pills every four hours, night and day, awakening the sleeping passengers, Fontaine wrote in her autobiography, No Bed of Roses.

The pill popping seemed to more or less work; Cummings died in 1990 at the age of 80.

Ok, let’s see how much you recall about this durable star.  As usual, questions today and answers tomorrow.  Here we go:

1) Question: Cummings’ most memorable movies included which of the following Alfred  Hitchcock thrillers?  a) 1949’s Under Capricorn; b) 1942’s Saboteur; c) 1944’s Lifeboat; or d) 1954’s Dial M For Murder.

2) Question: Cummings was never nominated for an Academy Award, but he did manage a slew of Emmy Award nominations and one actual win. What was it for?

3) Question: Which one of the following was not a leading lady in a Robert Cummings movie? a) Doris Day in 1954’s Lucky Me; Rosalind Russell in 1949’s Tell It To The Judge; Loretta Young in 1949’s The Accused; or d) Barbara Stanwyck in 1946’s The Bride Wore Boots.

4) Question: Perhaps best remembered today for his hit Fifties tv sitcom, The Bob Cummings Show, the actor actually made his initial tube splash in another series in which he played a footloose bachelor.  Can you name that earlier program?

5) Question: It’s not widely known that Cummings was at actually one point host of NBC’s Tonight program. Who preceded him in that role, and who followed him?

Here’s a film which deserves another look. Although largely dismissed in its time, it is in its own quiet way, a beauty. It gets better and better with each viewing.

Some backround:  Journey Into Fear was shot during the waning days of Orson Welles’ amazingly productive but highly contentious stint at RKO Radio Pictures in the early 1940’s, which began with Citizen Kane followed by the director’s crown jewel, The Magnificent  Ambersons.

According to Joseph Cotten (who played principal roles in each picture), The minute ‘Ambersons’ was finished, Orson invited me to join him in adapting ‘Journey Into Fear’  from Eric Ambler’s (1940) novel into a screenplay…(The movie) starred Dolores Del Rio and several Mercury actors, including Orson and me.

The actor noted in his 1987 autobiography, Joseph Cotten: Vanity Will Get You Somewhere (Avon Books), that Journey was the last Hollywood venture of the Mercury Theatre Company, founded in 1937 by Welles and producer (and later actor) John Houseman.  This is significant because some of Hollywood’s finest character and supporting actors came out of the Mercury.

What buttresses Journey considerably are the many sharp, superlative bits contributed by Mercury players including Everett Sloane, Jack Moss, Richard Bennett, Ruth Warrick and Agnes Moorehead. In his memoir, Cotten concentrates on leading actress del Rio (pictured below) whom he describes as the second most beautiful woman in the world. (First, he wrote, was his second wife, Patricia Medina.)

del Rio is among the most famous Hollywood names to come from Mexico. She was born in Durango as Lolita Dolores Asunsolo de Martinez in 1905, began her move career in the mid-Twenties (Joanna, High Steppes, Pals First). Her career flourished well after the silents were history, and for some time she enjoyed the reputation — as Cotten attests — as one of Hollywood’s most beautiful actresses.  She had many romances including an extended fling with — yes — Orson Welles.

The actress portrays in Journey the witty, world weary half of a touring night club dance team (her dissolute, card-shark partner is played by Jack Durant). She encounters Cotten’s character (Howard Graham, an American naval ordinance engineer advising the Turkish Navy in Istanbul) aboard a low-rent cargo boat described as little better than a floating slum. He is fleeing a Naxi-hired hit man. She is on to the next night club engagement.

Having noted that her dancing career is already into its 20th year, del Rio tells Cotten: I do not lie to you about my age…I was born in the Pyrenees.  Mother and father were very poor. Cotten to del Rio: But honest, no doubt. del Rio to Cotten: Oh, no.  My father was not at all honest.

Cotten as Graham find himself the target of an Nazi ring determined to eliminate him and his naval ordinance expertise before his return to the U.S.

His portrayal of Graham as a gentlemanly, mild-mannered corporate engineer is nicely offset by the sheer nastiness of the hit-man-for hire played by a portly and menacing Jack Moss (actually, Welles’ agent at the time).  Welles portrays oversized Col. Haki, head of Turkish secret police, who must protect Graham at all costs. Graham’s wife is played by Ruth Warrick.

Journey Into Fear boasts of one of the most economic and chilling introductory scenes in movie history.  It involves the hit man in a shabby Turkish hotel room combing his greasy hair, and loading a pistol — to the backround of scratched record on a gramophone in which the needle is stuck.  The surrealistic sound of the scene is a chiller, and sets the tone of this gently graceful thriller.

Final note: Norman Foster is the director of record, but it’s understood Welles staged the several scenes involving himself as an actor.  Journey Into Fear — see it.