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In 1910, the prestigious Fred Karno theatrical troupe in England got the chance to tour America.  Its star attraction, a twenty-one-year-old performer named Charles Chaplin, was on-board that first ship crossing the Atlantic.

His name is seldom invoked today, but if you compiled any list of innovators who’d actually changed the shape of movies, it would have to include Saul Bass.

Over the decades, our biggest stars and their agents have been forced to navigate yet another fascinating and frustrating aspect of the movie business: which parts to choose.

Humphrey Bogart was once asked if he had any difficulty putting aside his tough image to play a romantic leading man in “Casablanca” (1942). He said it was easy. “It helps,” Bogie said, “if you’re looking into the eyes of Ingrid Bergman.”

It seems Peter Lorre was born to be sinister. Though small in stature (just under 5'4"), his oversized, sleepy eyes seemed to pierce right into your soul. His soft, eerie voice, though imitated countless times by comedians, never failed to chill. Lorre sometimes belittled his own talent, describing himself as "a face maker." But what a face! Lorre's creepy presence was surprisingly flexible, allowing him to appear in everything from horror films, to comedies, to film noir.