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Burt Mustin was a salesman most of his life, but got his first taste of show business as the host of a weekly radio variety show on KDKA Pittsburgh in 1921. He appeared onstage in "Detective Story" at Sombrero Playhouse in Phoenix Arizona, and played the janitor in the movie version, (Histoire de détective (1951)), after moving to Hollywood. Hundreds of screen appearances later, he announced his retirement while filming an episode of Phyllis (1975). In the episode, his character married Mother Dexter, played by actress Judith Lowry. Lowry died one month before, and Mustin died one month after the episode aired.

Billie Burke was born Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke on August 7, 1884 in Washington, D.C. Her father was the internationally famous clown, Billy Burke, and she would spend most of her early years touring Europe before the family settled in London. In 1903, she appeared on the stage as an actress and came to America in 1907 to star opposite John Drew in "My Wife". A red-haired beauty, she became the toast of Broadway and married promoter Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. in April 1914. Billie was signed in 1915 to make the film Peggy (1916). Of the next 15 films that she made, she would make 14 in New York. In between films, she would return to the stage which was her first love. Her last films were released in 1921 and she went into semi-retirement until their fortune was wiped out in 1929. Billie would return to films to support herself and her husband. Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. would die, a broken man, in 1932.

It was in the comedy drama Les invités de huit heures (1933) that Billie would find the character that she would play the rest of her career. It is the hapless, feather-brained lady with the unmistakably high voice who would be more interested in little details than what was at hand. In some films, like Jim l'excentrique (1936), she was obviously too old for the part, but played it to the hilt. Beginning in 1937, she starred in the "Topper" series of films (Le couple invisible (1937), Fantômes en croisière (1938) and La dernière enquête de Mr. Topper (1941)) for producer Hal Roach in which she played Mrs. Topper with her usual fluffy performance. But for most of the people who were raised on television, she will always be remembered as Glinda, the Good Witch in Le Magicien d'Oz (1939). She continued to make films though out the 1940s and started another series with Le Père de la mariée (1950) and the follow-up Allons donc, papa! (1951).

A real trouper, she next went to television with the television series Doc Corkle (1952). The series was canceled after three weeks due to poor writing. By 1953, her career was slowing down and she would only make three more movies in 1959 and 1960. The best remembered one would be John Ford's Western Le Sergent noir (1960). Billie Burke retired for good and lived in Los Angeles, California, where she died at age 85 of natural causes on May 14, 1970.

For many years Walter Huston had two passions: his career as an engineer and his vocation for the stage. In 1909 he dedicated himself to the theatre, and made his debut on Broadway in 1924. In 1929 he journeyed to Hollywood, where his talent and ability made him one of the most respected actors in the industry. He won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for Le Trésor de la Sierra Madre (1948).

Joseph Sweeney was born on 26 July 1884 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for 12 Hommes en colère (1957), The United States Steel Hour (1953) and Armstrong Circle Theatre (1950). He died on 25 November 1963 in New York City, New York, USA.

Harry Antrim was born on 27 August 1884 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for L'héritière (1949), Les amants du crime (1951) and Ma vie est une chanson (1948). He was married to Bernice Gorman. He died on 18 January 1967 in Hollywood, California, USA.

Langdon first performed when he ran away from home at the age of 12-13 to join a travelling medicine show. In 1903 he scored a lasting success in vaudeville with an act called "Johnny's New Car" which he performed for twenty years. In 1923, he signed with Principal Pictures as a series star, but transferred to the Mack Sennett Studio when Mack Sennett bought the contract. Early in his film career, he had the good fortune to work regularly with the young Frank Capra. The two developed a unique character of an innocent man-child who found himself in dramatic and hazardous circumstances with only providence and good luck making him come out on top. This character clicked with the public and Langdon enjoyed a streak of artistic and commercial successes using it with Capra's direction. Unfortunately, he began to take the praise of his talent too seriously and broke with Capra so he could hog all the glory himself with his films. This proved to be a disastrous mistake as his first film "Three's a Crowd", a sickeningly sentimental film that plainly showed that he did not even approach the talent and skill of Capra which was needed to keep his character style viable. It has been also speculated the public was getting tired of Langdon's character, which contributed to Langdon's first solo film being an artistic and commercial failure. That film was the first in a series of bombs that ruined Langdon's career and relegated him to minor films from third string companies for the rest of his life.

Edgar Stehli was born on 12 July 1884 in Lyon, Rhône, France. He was an actor, known for La Tour des ambitieux (1954), Atlantis, terre engloutie (1961) and Le Monstre aux abois (1959). He was married to Emeline C Greenough. He died on 25 July 1973 in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, USA.

Wonderfully talented German-born actor, capable of tremendous comedic and dramatic performances, usually as some type of pompous bureaucrat or similarly arrogant individual. Ruman was born on October 11, 1884, in Hamburg, Germany, and actually studied electrotechnology in college before making the switch to acting. He served with the Imperial German Forces in World War I before coming to the United States in 1924. He became friendly with playwright George S. Kaufman and critic Alexander Woollcott and was regularly appearing in high-quality stage productions on Broadway.

With the advent of talkies, he was kept very busy in the cinema and became a favorite of the Marx Brothers, appearing as stiff-shirted NYC opera owner Herman Gottlieb in the comedy classic Une nuit à l'opéra (1935). He played a know-it-all surgeon crossing swords with Groucho Marx over what exactly was wrong with hypochondriac Margaret Dumont in Un jour aux courses (1937). and a dual role in Une nuit à Casablanca (1946). With his German accent, he was also a regular in several WWII espionage thrillers, including Les aveux d'un espion nazi (1939), They Came to Blow Up America (1943), and Hitler et sa clique (1944), and gave a superb portrayal of the two-faced POW guard Schulz in the splendid Stalag 17 (1953). He was also popular with famed director Ernst Lubitsch, who cast Ruman in Ninotchka (1939), and Jeu dangereux (1942). In all, he notched up over 100 feature film appearances as well as guest star spots on many TV shows.

Ruman suffered ill health for the final two decades of his life and passed away on February 14, 1967, from a heart attack.

Former stage actor and playwright - he wrote over 150 plays and vaudeville sketches - Hugh Herbert went, in the early 1930s to Hollywood, as a comedian. In the 1930s he worked mostly for Warner Bros., impersonating often eccentric millionaires, tycoons and dimwitted professors. In a few movies he collaborated on the screenplays, e.g. on "Gold Diggers of 1935" and "Hit Parade of 1941".

Mayer was born Lazar Meir in the Ukraine and grew up in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada after his parents fled Russian oppression in 1886. He had a brutal childhood, raised in poverty and suffering physical and emotional abuse from his nearly-illiterate peddler father. In the early 1890s, he changed his name to Louis and fudged his birth date to reflect the more "patriotic" date of July 4, 1885. He moved to Boston in 1904 and struggled as a scrap-metal dealer until he was able to purchase a burlesque house. Although he made large sums by showing films (he made a sizable fortune off Naissance d'une nation (1915)), his early business ventures favored legitimate theater in New England. As his theater empire expanded, he had acquired and refurbished enough small movie theaters that he was able to move his business to Los Angeles and venture into movie production in 1918. Along with Samuel Goldwyn and Marcus Loew of Metro Pictures, he formed a new company called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).

Over the next 25 years, MGM was "the Tiffany of the studios," producing more films and movie stars than any other studio in the world. Mayer became the prime creator of the enduring Hollywood of myth, home to stars like Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, and Jean Harlow. Mayer became the highest-paid man in America, one of the country's most successful horse breeders, a political force and Hollywood's leading spokesman. Both he and MGM reached their peaks at the end of World War II, and Mayer was forced out in 1951. He died of leukemia in 1957.

His real name was Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, and in the early 1900s, he was already working in the theater under Max Reinhardt's company. Important movies where he defined himself as a convincing actor were Passion (1919) and Quo Vadis? (1924), followed by Le dernier des hommes (1924) (aka The Last Laugh) in 1924 and Variétés (1925) (aka Variety) in 1925. In 1928, he became the first male leading actor to receive the academy award for Crépuscule de gloire (1928) directed by Josef von Sternberg. In 1929, Stenberg directed him in his world famous movie L'ange bleu (1930) (aka The Blue Angel) co-starring the young Marlene Dietrich (her first role). Later on, he concentrated on theater and dedicated his acting skills to the Nazi regime and also took part in the realization of Le président Krüger (1941) in 1941, an expensive anti-British film production. When the Second World War ended, the US government cleaned his image, and he converted to Catholicism. He played in a few more German movies, but his career never recaptured its brilliance.

Born in 1884, virile and dashing silent screen idol Owen Moore, equipped with incredibly handsome reddish and ruddy features, came to America with his family from Ireland at the age of 11. After some stage work, he entered films at the Biograph Studio in 1908 and appeared in many of D.W. Griffith's early productions.

Owen was Mary Pickford's stylish leading man in her early career-starters and they secretly married in 1911. Some of their classic pictures together include Cinderella (1914), in which he played her Prince Charming, and Mistress Nell (1915). Mary left Owen for Douglas Fairbanks, however, and the couple eventually divorced in 1920. A couple of years later Owen met and wed silent film actress Kathleen Perry, a marriage that lasted until his sudden death of a heart attack at age 54. This couple also made several pictures together.

A talented singer in his own right, Owen's timing was off for he was much too old to see what kind of impression he could have made in musicals come the advent of sound. A popular romantic leading man during his heyday, his career took a nosedive once talkies arrived. His last film would be Janet Gaynor's Une étoile est née (1937), in which he played a movie director.

Owen's brothers Tom Moore and Matt Moore were also popular leading men at around the same time, but Owen was probably the best known due to his association with Pickford. The three of them appeared together in only one feature film, Le dernier voyage (1929). His mother Mary Moore was a character actress for a time, featured in Clara Kimball Young's film Lola (1914). She eventually quit the business, returned to the British Isles and became Lady Wyndham, and died there in 1931. Two other siblings were also briefly actors, Mary Moore and Joe Moore (aka Joseph Moore), but they died young and remain much lesser known. Owen died fairly young himself at age 54 of a heart attack in 1939.

Short, chubby-framed, twinkle-eyed, ever-huggable Charles Winninger was a veteran vaudevillian by the time he arrived in talking films. Born in a trunk to Austrian immigrant show biz folk in Athens, Wisconsin, on May 26, 1884, he was the son of Rosalia (Grassler) and Franz Winninge, a violinist. He was initially christened Karl Winninger. He left school while quite young (age 8) to join and tour with his parent's vaudeville family act which was called Winninger Family Concert Co. Upon his parents' retirement, he and his five brothers went off to play in various stock and repertory companies. On film Charlie found an "in" with silent comedy shorts between 1915-1916 but never truly settled into the movie business until the advent of sound.

In the meantime Broadway made great use of his musical comedy talents, marking his debut with "The Yankee Girl" in 1910 which also featured actress (and later stage star) Blanche Ring. He married Blanche in 1912 and the couple went on to star together quite frequently in vaudeville and on Broadway, including the musical "When Claudia Smiles" (1914) in which Blanche played the title role. Throughout the 1920s there were plenty of roles for Charlie on the Great White Way including a stint with the Ziegfeld Follies (1920), several Winter Garden productions, and in such musical comedy showcases as "The Broadway Whirl" (1921) (with Blanche), "The Good Old Days" (1923), "No, No, Nanette" (1925) and "Yes, Yes, Yvette" (1927). His most significant contribution was originating the role of beloved Cap'n Andy in "Showboat" (1927). Playing the Kern/Hammerstein musical for two years straight, he eagerly returned to the role on Broadway in 1932.

With the success of "Show Boat," Hollywood started taking more of an interest in the grey-haired song-and-dance man for character roles. Such early talking movies included the slapstick comedy Soup to Nuts (1930) with Ted Healy and The Three Stooges. Though Charlie was known for adding his immeasurable touch to the comedy genre (Flying High (1931) and Madame poursuit Monsieur (1937)), he was also a warm-hearted presence in heavier pictures as well, including the melodramas Bad Sister (1931) with Bette Davis and La faute de Madeleine Claudet (1931) with Helen Hayes, and rugged adventures Gun Smoke (1931) and White Fang (1936). Although he did not play his famous stage role in the 1929 version, Charlie was thankfully able to preserve his beloved Cap'n Andy to film in the superb Irene Dunne/Allan Jones remake of Show Boat (1936). He became so associated with the riverboat captain that he was asked to create several variations of the character on radio.

Charlie was relied upon for his benign, errant dads, old-theater entertainers, lovable drunks and other rather wanderlust types in film, characters that usually represented old-fashioned common sense or mores. He was quite entertaining in such classics as La joyeuse suicidée (1937), Trois jeunes filles à la page (1936) and Femme ou démon (1939). In the 1940s he brightened up a number of MGM comedies and musicals including Place au rythme (1939), Little Nellie Kelly (1940), La danseuse des Folies Ziegfeld (1941), Duel de Femmes (1941), Broadway Rhythm (1944), and Living in a Big Way (1947). One of his last important roles was playing Will Rogers' Judge Priest role in director John Ford's film Le soleil brille pour tout le monde (1953), is only leading film role. He and wife Blanche never appeared together in a film although Blanche did play herself in the film Petite et charmante (1940), a film that featured Charlie. His Broadway swan song was in "Music in the Air" in 1951 and his final film occurred about a decade later with Raymie (1960). He also played Santa Claus in the hour-long entertainment The Miracle of the White Reindeer (1960) that same year.

TV roles dominated much of his work in the 50s. On the one-season The Charles Farrell Show (1956) he played the star's dear old dad. Divorced from wife Blanche in 1951, Charlie subsequently married stage actress-turned-novelist and screenwriter Gertrude Walker whom he originally met on Broadway when he returned to "Show Boat" in 1932 (Gertrude played the role of Lottie). Retired for many years, Charlie died in 1969 following an extended illness at the age of 84.

Josephine Dillon was born on 26 January 1884 in Colorado, USA. She was an actress, known for La Femme et le Monstre (1944). She was married to Clark Gable. She died on 10 November 1971 in Verdugo, California, USA.

When her Hollywood career began in 1934, Mary Nash was already a veteran performer, having appeared in vaudeville and on Broadway. Following a brief appearance as a dancer in 1904, she joined Ethel Barrymore in a 1905 off- Broadway production, 'Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire'. This was followed by 'Captain Jinks' and 'The Silver Box' with the same company, and in 1915 she acted in George Bernard Shaw's play 'Major Barbara' at the Playhouse Theatre. The versatile actress was as adept at comedy ('Captain Applejack',1921-22) as she was in drama (Cassie in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,1933).

She is best remembered on screen for being nasty to Shirley Temple in Heidi la sauvageonne (1937) and Petite princesse (1939), and for playing Katharine Hepburn's elegant and proper society mother in Indiscrétions (1940). In addition, she gave excellent value-for-money in the role of Emma Louise in Le vandale (1936) and as the ill-fated queen in the technicolor adventure Le signe du cobra (1944). Mary Nash was briefly married to the actor José Ruben ((1888-1969).

Harrison Ford was born on 16 March 1884 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. He was an actor, known for Capriciosa (1925), Fille d'Aphrodite (1926) and Le neurasthénique (1926). He was married to Beatrice Prentice. He died on 2 December 1957 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Maria Franklin Gable was born on 17 January 1884 in Chapman, Kansas, USA. She was married to Clark Gable, Andrew Denzil Langham, Alfred Thomas Lucas and William Prentiss Jr.. She died on 24 September 1966 in Houston, Texas, USA.

Gibb McLaughlin was born on 19 July 1884 in Sunderland, Tyne-and-Wear, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Oliver Twist (1948), Laquelle des trois? (1928) and Mr. Reeder in Room 13 (1938). He was married to Eleanor Morton. He died on 30 June 1961 in Kensington, London, England, UK.

Joe Smith was born on 16 February 1884 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Heart of New York (1932), Manhattan Parade (1931) and Jamboree (1957). He was married to Mabel Miller and Sara C. Raynor. He died on 22 February 1981 in Englewood, New Jersey, USA.

Oscar Micheaux, the first African-American to produce a feature-length film (The Homesteader (1919)) and a sound feature-length film (The Exile (1931)), is not only a major figure in American film for these milestones, but because his oeuvre is a window into the American history and psyche regarding race and its deleterious effects on individuals and society. He also is a pioneer of independent cinema. Though the end products of his labors often were technically crude due to budgetary constraints, Micheaux the filmmaker is a symbol of the artist triumphing against great odds to bring his vision to the public while serving in the socially important role of critical spirit. "One of the greatest tasks of my life has been to teach that the colored man can be anything," Micheaux said. He used the new medium of the motion picture to communicate his ideas in order to rebut racism and to raise the consciousness of African-Americans in an age of segregation and overt, legal racism. As a filmmaker, Micheaux was "50 years ahead of his time", according to Kansas Humanities Council Board member Martin Keenan, the chairman of the Oscar Micheaux Film Festivals in Great Bend, Kansas, in 2001 and 2003. Oscar Micheaux was born in 1884, in Metropolis, Illinois, one of 13 children of former slaves. When he was 17 years old he left home for Chicago, where he got a job as a Pullman porter, one of the best jobs an African-American could get in the days of Jim Crow laws that separated the races and were an official bulwark of racism. Inspired by the self-help, assimilationist teachings of Booker T. Washington and the "Go West" pioneer philosophy of Horace Greeley, Micheaux acquired two 160-acre tracts of land in Gregory County, South Dakota, in 1905, despite no previous experience in farming. His experiences as a homesteader were the basis for his first novel, "The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer", which was published in 1913. He rewrote it into his most famous novel, "The Homesteader" (1917), which he self-published and distributed, selling it door-to-door to small businessmen and homesteaders in small towns, white people with whom he lived and did business with. "The Homesteader" not only elucidated Micheaux's understanding of societal cleavages but proselytized for assimilating black and white communities. He was firmly dedicated to the idea of art as a didactic medium. Micheaux lost his homestead in 1915 due to financial losses caused by a drought. He moved to Sioux City, Iowa, where he established the Western Book and Supply Co. He continued to write novels, selling them himself, door-to-door. Meanwhile, brothers George Johnson and Noble Johnson, African-American movie pioneers who ran the Lincoln Motion Picture Co. in Los Angeles, wanted to make "The Homesteader" into a film. They tried to buy the rights to the novel but would not meet Micheaux's demands that he direct it and that it be made with a large budget. After his demands were refused, Micheaux reorganized Western Book and Supply as the Micheaux Film and Book Co. in Chicago. He began to raise money for his own film version of "The Homesteader". Micheaux returned to the white businessmen and farmers around Sioux City, Iowa, where he still maintained an office, and sold them stock in his new company. In this way he was able to raise enough capital to begin filming his novel in Chicago, which was then a major film production center. The film came in at eight reels, making it the first feature-length film made by an African-American. "Race films"--as films made for black audiences were called until the advent of the modern civil rights movement in the 1950s--and even "mainstream" films had been mostly shorts up to that time. Even Charles Chaplin didn't make his first feature-length film until 1921, with Le Kid (1921). The Homesteader (1919) premiered in Chicago on February 20, 1919. An ad for the movie placed in the "Chicago Defender", the premier newspaper for African-Americans, heralded the film as the "greatest of all Race productions" and claimed it was "destined to mark a new epoch in the achievements of the Darker Races . . . every Race man and woman should cast aside their skepticism regarding the Negro's ability as a motion picture star, and go and see, not only for the absorbing interest obtaining therein, but as an appreciation of those finer arts which no race can ignore and hope to obtain a higher plan of thought and action." His next film, Within Our Gates (1920), was his response to D.W. Griffith's Naissance d'une nation (1915), a film that had glorified the Ku Klux Klan and justified the violent oppression of African-Americans to prevent miscegenation. Though Griffith's flawed masterpiece was the most popular movie until the release of another Civil War potboiler called Autant en emporte le vent (1939) in 1939, it was loathed by African-Americans due to its crude and hateful racial stereotypes. "Within These Gates" was made to rebut Griffith and show that the reality of racism in the US was that African-Americans were more likely to be lynched and exploited by whites than the reverse. The movie showed African-American and white communities that the racism of the dominant society could be challenged. Micheaux's place in history was assured as he injected an African-American perspective, via the powerful medium of the motion picture, into the American consciousness. Working out of Chicago, he subsequently made more than 30 films over the next three decades, including musicals, comedies, westerns, romances and gangster films. Some of the popular themes in his work were African-Americans passing for white, intermarriage and legal injustice. He used actors from New York's Lafayette Players and always cast his actors on the basis of type, with light-skinned African-American actors typically playing the leads and darker-skinned blacks the heavies. That trait was part of the consciousness of the African-American community (and mirrored the very racism that he inveigled against) that persists to this day, and Micheaux was severely chastised for it by later critics. However, no critic could deny the importance of Micheaux's movies, as they were a radical departure from Hollywood's racist portrayals of blacks as lazy dolts, Uncle Toms, Mammies and dangerous bucks. As the most successful and prolific of black filmmakers, Micheaux was vital to African-American and overall American consciousness by providing a diverse portfolio of non-stereotyped black characters, as well as images and stories of African-American life. He married Alice B. Russell in March 1926, and the two remained married until his death in March 1951. He was buried at Great Bend Cemetery, Great Bend, Kansas.

J.M. Kerrigan was born on 16 December 1884 in Dublin, Ireland. He was an actor and director, known for Autant en emporte le vent (1939), 20.000 Lieues sous les mers (1954) and Le Loup-garou (1941). He died on 29 April 1964 in Hollywood, California, USA.

Jimmy Conlin was born on 14 October 1884 in Camden, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for Les voyages de Sullivan (1941), Calling Philo Vance (1939) and Oh quel mercredi! (1947). He was married to Dorothy Julia Ryan, Myrtle Glass and Lillian Grace Steel (actress). He died on 7 May 1962 in Encino, California, USA.

A pioneer of Spanish cinema, Ricardo de Baños was involved in the film industry almost from its beginnings. He directed his first film in 1904. He also photographed many of his own productions. Although he directed a fair number of films, he is generally regarded as more of an exceptionally notable cameraman than a director.

Although he occasionally played honest police officials or army officers, New York-born C. Henry Gordon excelled at playing oily, duplicitous villains, whether gangsters, businessmen or evil rulers. Among the many evildoers he portrayed, his most memorable would have to be the murderous Surat Khan, who massacred prisoners, women and children, in the classic Errol Flynn swashbuckler La charge de la brigade légère (1936).

Godfrey Seymour Tearle was born in 1884, the son of British actor/manager George (Osmond) Tearle and American actress Marianne Conway (her second marriage). His father and uncle were first-generation acting Tearles, and his mother also came from a family of actors. It seems that Godfrey's destiny was set at birth. The Tearles' family's origins lay rooted in the rural areas of Bedfordshire. His grandfather was a soldier who served in the Crimean War. Godfrey made his stage debut at age nine as young Prince Richard, Duke of York, in his father's production of "Richard III." He subsequently attended Carlisle Grammar School in Carlisle, England, but continued acting in his father's company into his teen years. His older half-brother, Frederick (Levy), was also a successful actor and later billed himself as Conway Tearle and earned distinction as a suave silent-era matinée idol. In 1908 Godfrey made his film debut in a shortened version of Romeo and Juliet (1908), at the Lyceum Theatre, which co-starred then-wife actress Mary Malone. Building up his stage reputation in the classics, he became a Shakespearean player of note with sterling portrayals of "Othello", "Macbeth" and "Henry V", among others. Active service in the Royal Field Artillery in 1915 temporarily interrupted his budding theater career for nearly four years. He returned to the footlights, but also attempted to earn a reputation in silents. Although he was less successful, Godfrey's mellifluous voice proved ideal for sound and he made a mild go of it with occasional movie forays in the 1930s and 1940s. He distinguished himself as patrician gents in both character leads and supports. He made a particular impression in Les 39 marches (1935), Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller, in which he played the professor (aka menacing agent) minus a finger; Au carrefour du siècle (1947) as President Franklin D. Roosevelt; La merveilleuse histoire de Mandy (1952), a four-tissue tearjerker, as the grandfather of a deaf child; and the charming comedy Tortillard pour Titfield (1953) as a genial bishop, which was released the year of his death. On the personal front, he and actress Malone were divorced after 20 years of marriage, and Godfrey married much-younger starlet Stella Freeman in 1932. Tragically she died aged 26 in May 1936 from pneumonia, just a few months after the suicide of his actor/brother Malcolm Tearle. A third marriage failed for but he managed to enjoy the last few years of his life in the company of Stratford stage actress Jill Bennett. He was knighted in 1951 and died two years later in London, following a lengthy illness, at age 68.