Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Jean Renoir (French pronunciation: [ʁənwaʁ]; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. His pictures Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. As an author, he wrote the definitive biography of his father, the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Renoir, My Father (1962). Jean Renoir was ranked by the BFI's Sight & Sound poll of critics as the fourth greatest director of all time.

Renoir was born in the Montmartre district of Paris, France. He was the second son of Aline Charigot and the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He was also the brother of Pierre Renoir, a noted French stage and film actor; the uncle of Claude Renoir, a cinematographer; and the father of Alain Renoir^(fr), professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley.

Dan Duryea (January 23, 1907 – June 7, 1968) was an American actor, known for roles in film, stage and television.

Born and raised in White Plains, New York, Duryea graduated from White Plains Senior High School in 1924 and Cornell University in 1928. While at Cornell, Duryea was elected into the Sphinx Head Society. He made his name on Broadway in the play Dead End, followed by The Little Foxes, in which he portrayed Leo Hubbard.

Duryea moved to Hollywood in 1940 to appear in the film version of The Little Foxes. He continued to establish himself with supporting & secondary roles in films such as The Pride of the Yankees & None But the Lonely Heart. As the 1940s progressed, he found his niche as the "sniveling, deliberately taunting" antagonist in a number of films noir (Scarlet Street, The Woman in the Window, Criss Cross, Too Late for Tears), though he was sometimes cast in more objective roles (Black Angel, Ministry of Fear, One Way Street). In 1946 exhibitors voted him the eight-most promising "star of tomorrow".

Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic performances in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.

Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) and Vincent Leonard Price, Sr., who was the president of the National Candy Company. His grandfather, Vincent Clarence Price, invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder," the first cream of tartar baking powder, and secured the family's fortune.

Price attended St. Louis Country Day School. He was further educated at Yale in art history and fine art. He was a member of the Courtauld Institute, London. He became interested in the theatre during the 1930s, appearing professionally on stage for the first time in 1935.

He made his film debut in 1938 with Service de Luxe and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He also played Joseph Smith, Jr. in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944) as well as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).

Sir John Mills CBE (22 February 1908 – 23 April 2005), born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills, was an English actor who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.

Mills was born at the Watts Naval School in North Elmham, Norfolk, England, and grew up in Belton, where his father was the headmaster of the village school and in Felixstowe, Suffolk, where he lived in a modest house in Ham's Road. He was educated at Norwich High School for Boys, where it is said that his initials can still be seen carved into the brickwork on the side of the building in Upper St. Giles Street. He made his acting debut on the stage of the Sir John Leman School in Beccles in a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream when he played the part of Puck.^{[citation needed]} Upon leaving school he worked as a clerk at a corn merchants in Ipswich.

Mills took an early interest in acting, making his professional debut at the London Hippodrome in The Five O'Clock Girl in 1929. He also starred in the Noël Coward revue Words and Music. He made his film debut in The Midshipmaid (1932), and appeared as Colley in the 1939 film version of Goodbye, Mr Chips, opposite Robert Donat.