For nearly 30 years, two women ruled Hollywood with more power from their typewriters than the heads of most studios: Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. A feud petty, vicious, glamorous and historic, their saga was a show almost as thrilling as the films they chronicled. To read Hollywood gossip during its Golden Age was to watch a battle royale between two queens battling for the right to wear a crown of unchallenged supremacy.

In the great constellation of Hollywood character actors, few stars shine with the perennial warmth and delight of Edward Everett Horton. With his fluttering hands, quivering indignation, impeccable timing, and that unmistakable, gently flustered voice, Horton became one of the most beloved supporting players of the 20th century — the kind of performer whose mere entrance into a scene lifted the entire film.

In the long corridor of Hollywood history, where legends stride and fade with the changing light, there are a few figures whose warmth lingers long after their names slip from the marquee. Louise Beavers is one of them — an actress whose voice, presence, and quiet dignity shaped early American cinema in ways the industry was too blind, too limited, and too prejudiced to fully acknowledge in her lifetime.

Few actresses in Hollywood’s Golden Age carried the weight of centuries in their eyes quite like Maria Ouspenskaya. With her measured voice, stern bearing, and luminous presence, she could turn a few lines into prophecy — and did, most memorably, in 1941’s The Wolf Man.

In the silent era — that shimmering realm where faces spoke louder than words — few actors possessed the ethereal beauty and gentle magnetism of Einar Hanson. To watch him on screen is to glimpse a star who seemed carved from moonlight: expressive, graceful, and radiating a tender vulnerability that set him apart from the more rugged idols of the 1920s.