Carole Lombard was an American actress. She was particularly noted for her comedic roles in several classic films of the 1930s, most notably in the 1936 film My Man Godfrey. She is listed as one of the American Film Institute’s greatest stars of all time and was the highest-paid star in Hollywood in the late 1930s, earning around US$500,000 per year. Lombard’s career was cut short when she died at the age of 33 in the crash of TWA Flight 3.

Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her parents were Frederick C. Peters and Elizabeth Knight. Her paternal grandfather, John Claus Peters, was the son of German immigrants, Claus Peters and Caroline Catherine Eberlin. On her mother’s side, she was a descendant of Thomas Hastings who came from the East Anglia region of England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. Lombard was the youngest of three children, having two older brothers. She spent her early childhood in a sprawling, two-story house at 704 Rockhill Street in Fort Wayne, near the St. Mary’s River. Her father had been injured during his early life and was left with constant headaches which caused him to burst out in paroxysms of anger which disturbed the family. Her parents divorced and her mother took the three children to Los Angeles in 1914, where Lombard attended Virgil Jr. High School and then Fairfax High School. She was elected “May Queen” in 1924. She quit school to pursue acting full-time, but graduated from Fairfax in 1927. Lombard was a second generation Bahá’í who formally enrolled in 1938.

Lombard made her film debut at the age of twelve after she was seen playing baseball in the street by director Allan Dwan; he cast her as a tomboy in A Perfect Crime. In the 1920s, she worked in several low-budget productions credited as ‘Jane Peters’, and then later as ‘Carol Lombard’. Her friend Miriam Cooper helped Lombard land small roles in her husband Raoul Walsh’s films. In 1925, she was signed as a contract player with Fox Film Corporation. She also worked for Mack Sennett and Pathé Pictures. She became a well-known actress and made a smooth transition to sound films, starting with High Voltage. In 1930, she began working for Paramount Pictures after having been dropped from both Twentieth Century and Pathé.

Lombard was originally given roles that would help to bolster the reputations of her leading men. It was not until 1934 that her career began to take off. That year, director Howard Hawks noticed that Lombard had something that perhaps had not been unleashed on film. He hired her for his next film, Twentieth Century, alongside stage legend John Barrymore. Lombard was at first terrified to be working alongside such a star and it was not until Hawks took her aside and threatened to fire her that she permitted her fiery personality to show on the screen. The film brought Lombard a level of fame.

Carroll Baker is an American actress who has enjoyed popularity as both a serious dramatic actress and, particularly in the 1960s, a movie sex symbol. Despite being cast in a wide range of roles during her heyday, Baker’s beautiful features, blonde hair, and distinctive drawl made her particularly memorable in roles as a brash, flamboyant woman.

Baker was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Virginia and William Watson Baker, who was a traveling salesman. She spent a year at community college, and subsequently worked as a magician’s assistant.

Baker began her film career in 1953, with a small part in Easy to Love. After appearing in television commercials and training at New York’s Actors Studio, she took a role in the Broadway production of All Summer Long. That appearance brought her to the attention of director Elia Kazan, who cast Baker as the title character in his controversial Baby Doll, Her Tennessee Williams-scripted role as a Mississippi teenage bride to a failed middle-aged cotton gin owner brought Baker instant fame as well as a certain level of notoriety. Baby Doll would remain the film for which she is best remembered; she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role. Two months prior to Baby Doll’s release, she appeared in the supporting role of Luz Benedict II in Giant, opposite Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean.

She would go on to work steadily in films throughout the late fifties and early sixties, appearing in a variety of genres: romances, such as The Miracle co-starring a young Roger Moore and But Not for Me ; westerns, including The Big Country and How the West Was Won ; and steamy melodramas, including Something Wild, directed by her then-husband Jack Garfein, and Station Six-Sahara. While Baker was on location in Africa for the 1965 movie Mister Moses, an apocryphal story has it that a Maasai chief offered 150 cows, 200 goats, sheep, and $750 for her hand in marriage. She subsequently appeared with Masai warriors on the cover of Life‘s 1964 issue. In addition to her film acting, she also found time to appear again on Broadway, starring in the 1962 production of Garson Kanin’s Come on Strong.

Carter DeHaven was a movie and stage actor, movie director and writer.

De Haven started his career in vaudeville and started acting in movies in 1915. A 1927 short, Character Studies, purports to display DeHaven’s quick-change abilities, as he transforms himself in seconds into the spitting image of various major film stars of the era: Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle and 13-year old Jackie Coogan; this was the only film in which Keaton and Lloyd appeared together, and also marked Keaton’s last film appearance with Arbuckle, his former partner.

DeHaven went on to work with Charlie Chaplin, as assistant director on Modern Times and assistant producer for The Great Dictator. He was married to actress Flora Parker DeHaven. Their daughter, actress Gloria DeHaven, made her first screen appearance in Modern Times. Both Carter and Gloria DeHaven have their own stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Archibald Alexander Leach, better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English-American actor. With his distinctive yet not quite placeable Mid-Atlantic accent, he was noted as perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man: handsome, virile, charismatic, and charming.

He was named the second Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. His popular classic films include The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, Gunga Din, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, Suspicion, Arsenic and Old Lace, Notorious, To Catch A Thief, An Affair to Remember, North by Northwest, and Charade. At the 42nd Academy Awards the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored him with an Honorary Award “for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with the respect and affection of his colleagues”.

Archibald Alexander Leach was born in Horfield, Bristol, to Elsie Maria Kingdon and Elias James Leach. An only child, he had an unhappy childhood, attending Bishop Road Primary School. His mother had suffered from depression since the death of a previous child. His father placed her in a mental institution, and told his nine-year-old son only that she had gone away on a “long holiday”; it was not until he was in his thirties that Grant discovered her alive, in an institutionalized care facility.

Carlyle Blackwell was an American silent film actor and a minor director and producer.

Born in Troy, Pennsylvania, he made his film debut in the 1910 Vitagraph Studios production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin directed by J. Stuart Blackton. Between then and 1930, when talkies ended his acting career, he appeared in more than 180 films. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Blackwell has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6340 Hollywood Boulevard.

After his final film in 1930, Blackwell turned to performing on stage in live theatre.

Carmel Myers was an American actress who worked chiefly in silent movies.

Myers was born in San Francisco, the daughter of an Australian rabbi and Austrian Jewish mother. Her father became well-connected with California’s emerging film industry, and introduced her to film pioneer D. W. Griffith, who gave Carmel a small part in Intolerance. Myers also got her brother Zion Myers into Hollywood as a writer/director.

From this beginning, Myers left for New York, where she acted mainly on stage for the next two years. She was signed by Universal, where she emerged as a popular actress in vamp roles. Her most popular film from this period is probably the romantic comedy All Night, opposite Rudolph Valentino. By 1924 she was working for MGM, making such films as Broadway After Dark, which also starred Adolphe Menjou, Norma Shearer and Anna Q. Nilsson.

In 1925, she appeared in arguably her most famous role, that of the Egyptian vamp Iras in Ben-Hur, who tries to seduce both Messala and Ben-Hur himself. This film was a boost to Myers’ career, and she appeared in major roles throughout the 1920s, including Tell It to the Marines in 1926 with Lon Chaney, Sr., William Haines and Eleanor Boardman. Myers appeared in Four Walls and Dream of Love, both with Joan Crawford in 1928; and in The Show of Shows, a showcase of popular contemporary film actors.