Reel Characters: Great Movie Character Actors

Home video and cable TV have brought these unforgettable faces from Hollywood's Golden Era into millions of living rooms. Interview-profiles with 12 of the movies' best-loved supporting players, including Elisha Cook (the baby-faced gunman in "The Maltese Falcon"), Sam Jaffe (the High Lama in "Lost Horizon"), Beulah Bondi (Jimmy Stewart's mother in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"), Fritz Feld (the perennial maitre d'), John Qualen, Charles Lane, Iris Adrian, John Carradine and Anita Garvin (the scorned wife or girlfriend in many Laurel and Hardy comedies). Together they offer a fresh perspective on the stars and directors of the past. They reveal what it was really like to work alongside such legends as Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard and W.C. Fields; how they were treated by superstar directors like Frank Capra, John Ford and Orson Welles. The book includes over 100 rare photos and extensive filmographies, plus a foreword by Fritz Feld.