Edmond O'Brien was an American film actor who is perhaps best remembered for his role in D.O.A.. He also co-starred with Richard Rust in the NBC legal drama Sam Benedict, which aired during the 1962-1963 television season.

Born in New York, New York, O'Brien made his film debut in 1938, and gradually built a career as a highly regarded supporting actor. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces and appeared in the Air Forces' Broadway play and film Winged Victory.

He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a harried publicity agent in The Barefoot Contessa and was also nominated for his role as an alcoholic U.S. senator in Seven Days in May. Prior to that, O'Brien had an acclaimed role in 1950's D.O.A. as a poisoned man who sets out to find his own murderer before he dies.

His other notable films include The Killers, White Heat, The Girl Can't Help It, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Birdman of Alcatraz, The Longest Day, Fantastic Voyage, and The Wild Bunch .

Edmund Dantes Lowe was an American actor. His formative experience began in vaudeville and silent film. He was born in San Jose, California.

Edmund Lowe’s career included over 100 films in which he starred as the leading man. He is best remembered for his role as Sergeant Quirt in the 1926 movie, What Price Glory. Making a smooth transition to talking pictures he remained popular but by the mid 30’s he was no longer a major star although he occasionally played leading man to the likes of Jean Harlow, Mae West, and Claudette Colbert. He remained a valuable supporting actor at the major studios while continuing in leads for such “Poverty Row” studios as Columbia Pictures where his skills could bolster low budget productions. He also starred in the 1950s television show, Front Page Detective and appeared as the elderly lead villain in the first episode of Maverick in 1957.

Lowe was married to Esther Miller until early 1925.

Lowe met Lilyan Tashman while filming Ports of Call. Lowe and Tashman were wed on September 21, 1925. The wedding occurred before the release of the film. The two made their home in Hollywood, in a house thought to have been designed by Tashman.

Edna Best was a British actress. Born Edna Hove in Hove, England. She was educated in Brighton and later studied dramatic acting under Miss Kate Rorke. Best was well known on the London stage before she entered films in 1921, having made her debut at Grand Theatre, Southampton in Charley’s Aunt in 1917. She also won a silver swimming cup as the lady swimming champion of Sussex.

She is best remembered for her role as the mother in the original 1934 film version of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. Among her other film credits are , Swiss Family Robinson, The Late George Apley and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and The Iron Curtain. She received a nomination for an Emmy Award in 1957 for her role in This Happy Breed. Best had appeared on television as early as 1938, in a production of the play Love from a Stranger, adapted from the Agatha Christie short story Philomel Cottage by Frank Vosper. The Wednesday afternoon broadcast was aired live, not recorded, and could be seen only in London due to the limitations of the nascent technology.

She was married to the actor Herbert Marshall from 1928 until 1940. They were the parents of the actress Sarah Marshall.

Edna May Oliver was an American film actress. During the 1930s, she was one of the American screen’s best-known character actresses often playing tart-tongued spinsters.

Born Edna May Nutter in Malden, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ida May and Charles Edward Nutter, Edna was a descendant of the sixth American president, John Quincy Adams. She quit school at age fourteen in order to pursue a career on stage and achieved her first success in 1917 on Broadway in Jerome Kern’s musical comedy Oh, Boy!, playing the hero’s comically dour Quaker Aunt Penelope.

In 1925, Oliver appeared in The Cradle Snatchers co-starring Mary Boland, Margaret Dale, Gene Raymond, Raymond Hackett & a young Humphrey Bogart. Oliver’s most notable stage appearance was as Parthy, wife of Cap’n Andy Hawks, in the original 1927 stage production of the musical Show Boat. She repeated the role in the 1932 Broadway revival, but turned down the chance to play Parthy in the 1936 film version of the show so that she could play the Nurse in that year’s film version of Romeo and Juliet, her only role in a Shakespeare film or play.

Her film debut occurred in 1923 in the film Wife in Name Only and she continued to appear in films until Lydia in 1941. Oliver first gained major notice in films for her appearances in several comedy films starring the team of Wheeler & Woolsey including Half Shot at Sunrise, her first film under her RKO Radio Pictures contract in 1930.

Eddie Foy, Sr., was an actor, comedian, dancer and vaudevillian.

Foy’s parents, Richard and Mary Fitzgerald immigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1855 and lived first in New York’s Bowery, then in Greenwich Village, where Eddie was born. Richard Fitzgerald died in an insane asylum in 1862 from syphilis-induced dementia, and his widow took her four children to Chicago, where she reportedly at one time tended the mentally ill widow of Abraham Lincoln. Six-year-old Eddie began performing in in the streets and local saloons to support his family. At 15, he changed his name to Foy and with a partner began dancing in bars, traveling throughout the western United States. He worked for a time as a supernumerary in theatrical productions, sharing a stage at times with such leading men of the time as Edwin Booth and Joseph Jefferson. With another partner, Jim Thompson, Foy went west again and gained his first professional recognition in mining camps and cow towns. In one such town, Dodge City, Kansas, Foy and his partner lingered for some time and Foy became acquainted with notable citizens Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Doc Holliday. Foy in later years told of an altercation over a girl with fellow actor Charles Chapin, who was drunkenly taking pot-shots at Foy. The gunfire awakened Wyatt Earp, who disarmed the actor and sent both the players home to sleep it off. Foy is also rumored to have been in Tombstone, Arizona in October 1881 appearing at the local theatre when the Gunfight at the OK Corral occurred on the 26th of that month.

In 1879, Foy married Rose Howland, one of the singing Howland Sisters, who were traveling the same circuit. Three years later, Foy and troupe relocated to Philadelphia and joined the Carncross Minstrels. That same year, however, Rose Foy died in childbirth, as did the child she was delivering. Foy lingered with the troupe for two seasons, then returned to the road. He joined David Henderson’s troupe and traveled all around the U.S. dancing, doing comedy, and acting in farces. In San Francisco, he met Lola Sefton and was romantically involved with her for ten years, until her death in 1894. Although some sources claim they were married, no record of their marriage has ever been found, nor apparently did Foy ever state clearly that a marriage had occurred. They had no children.

He returned to Chicago in 1888 as the star comedian in variety shows and revues, initially for his own company. He played the variety circuits for years in a series of song and dance acts, eventually rising to musical comedy stardom in such Broadway hits as The Strollers, and Mr. Bluebeard. Foy specialized in eccentric routines and costumes, often appearing in drag to hilarious effect. His upper lip extended well below his teeth, giving him an unusual V-shaped grin, and making him look like he had no upper teeth. As a result he spoke with a slurred lisp that audiences adored.