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MORE INFO ON ROSINA LAWRENCE: Promising dancer, singer and ingenue in light films, notably some of the 'Our Gang' shorts as well as Laurel & Hardy comedies, who married in 1939 and thereupon retired from the screen.

Appeared on the same Mexican dinner club bill in 1934 with The Dancing Cansinos. Margarita Cansino would change her name later to Rita Hayworth. Shortly after, the women were chosen as two of the "Four Debutante Stars of 1936."

Lawrence met her second husband, John Charles McCabe, at a "Sons of the Desert" convention. McCabe was the founder of the "Sons of the Desert" and wrote the authorized biography of the comedians, "Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy".

MORE INFO ON DON ALVARADO: Don Page was given the screen name Don Alvarado by studio chief Jack Warner while they purportedly were driving past the Los Angeles street Alvarado. Page played a number of starring roles that relied on his Latin good looks, achieving a certain following as a Rudolph Valentino type. He was barely 17 when he left his native Albuquerque and came to Los Angeles where he became fast friends with fellow struggling actor Gilbert Roland. Page met his future wife Ann Boyar while both were still teenagers and the young couple married and soon after had a daughter named Joy. After six years of marriage Ann Page fell in love with Jack Warner and the marriage dissolved. Warner waited several more years until his parents died before he divorced his wife, Irma, and married Ann. When asked why she had divorced Page to marry Warner, Ann Warner joked, "the talkies, of course." In 1928 Warner's studio had ushered in the sound era and Page's career, like those of so many other silent actors, had suffered. He continued to act, but in supporting roles. He and Ann remained friends, though, and after a long career as an assistant director, Page was asked by his former wife if he might like to manage the 80,000 acre Arizona cattle ranch she had purchased with Warner. Page had grown up in cattle country, was an experienced horseman and spoke Spanish. He accepted the job and by all accounts was a respected and much-liked manager.

MORE INFORMATION ON LYDA ROBERTI:  Lyda's father was German clown Roberti, her mother a Polish trick rider. As a child performer, she toured Europe and Asia with the Circus in which she was born, leaving it (and her reportedly abusive father) in Shanghai, China. In this truly international city, Lyda became a child cafe entertainer and learned the fractured English that became her trademark. Around 1927, she emigrated to California, finding work in vaudeville, where she was "discovered" in 1930 by Broadway producer Lou Holtz and became an overnight star in his 1931 show 'You Said It'. Lyda's unforgettable stage and screen character was a sexy blonde whose charming accent and uninhibited man-chasing were played for hilarious laughs. From 1932-35 she made 8 comedy and musical films mainly at Paramount, with Fields, Cantor, and other great comedians; her unique singing style was also popular on the radio and records. Her health declining from premature heart disease, she briefly replaced the late Thelma Todd in Hal Roach comedy shorts with Patsy Kelly and appeared in 3 features for MGM and Columbia, then retired from film work a few months before her fatal heart attack at age 31. 

MORE INFO ON PATSY KELLY: She teamed up with Thelma Todd in a series of 2 reelers 1931-35. She won a tony in 1971 for "No, No, Nannette" Her brother gave her the nickname "Patsy." Frank Fay, her boss at one point, developed a crush on her, but she rejected him. Later, when she called him "Frank" instead of Mr. Fay, he fired her. Won Broadway's 1971 Tony Award as Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Musical) for "No, No, Nannette. She was again nominated in the same category in 1973 for "Irene." In 1934, she was the only passenger in an automobile on the Santa Monica pier driven by actor and female impersonator Gene Malin. He accidentally backed the car off the pier and subsequently drowned. Kelly survived.

MORE INFO ON HAL ROACH: Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York in 1892. After working as, among other things, a gold prospector, he wound up in Hollywood and began picking up jobs as an extra in comedies, where he met comedian Harold Lloyd. He began producing, directing and writing a series of short film comedies starring Lloyd around 1915. These were quite successful, and Roach started his own production company and eventually bought his own studio. By the early 1920s he had eclipsed Mack Sennett as the King of Comedy and created many of the most memorable comic series of all time, even by today's standards. These include the team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Charley Chase and The Little Rascals. By the late 1930s Roach's formula for success was jeopardized by audience demands for bigger, feature-length productions, and he was forced to try his hand at making full-length screwball comedies, musicals and dramas, although he still kept turning out two-reel comedies. By the 1950s he was producing mainly for television. In 1983 his company developed the first successful digital colorization process. Roach then became a producer for many TV series on the Disney Channel, and his company still produces most of their films and videos.