Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography. Many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

The term film noir, French for "black film", first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, was unknown to most American film industry professionals of the classic era. Cinema historians and critics defined the noir canon in retrospect. Before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic film noirs were referred to as melodramas. The question of whether film noir qualifies as a distinct genre is a matter of ongoing debate among scholars.

Barbara Stanwyck (July 16, 1907 – January 20, 1990) was an American actress. She was a film and television star, known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional with a strong screen presence, and a favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra. After a short but notable career as a stage actress in the late 1920s, she made 85 films in 38 years in Hollywood, before turning to television.

Stanwyck was nominated for the Academy Award four times, and won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe. She was the recipient of honorary lifetime awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1981, the American Film Institute in 1987, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Golden Globes, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the Screen Actors Guild. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is ranked as the eleventh greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute.

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens in Brooklyn, New York on July 16, 1907. She was the fifth and youngest child of Catherine Ann (née McPhee) and Byron E. Stevens; the couple were working-class, her father a native of Massachusetts and her mother an immigrant from Nova Scotia, Canada. Stanwyck had English and Scottish ancestry. When she was four, her mother was killed when a drunken stranger pushed her off a moving streetcar. Two weeks after the funeral, Byron Stevens joined a work crew digging the Panama canal and was never seen again. Ruby and her brother Byron were raised by their elder sister Mildred, five years Ruby's senior. When Mildred got a job as a John Cort showgirl, Ruby and Byron were placed in a series of foster homes (as many as four in a year), from which Ruby often ran away.

John Brahm (August 17, 1893 – October 13, 1982) was a film and television director possibly best known today for directing a dozen of the original Twilight Zone episodes including the now classic "Time Enough at Last". His films include The Undying Monster (1942), The Lodger (1944), Hangover Square (1945), the film noir The Locket (1946) with Laraine Day, Robert Mitchum, and Brian Aherne, and the Secret Sharer segment of Face to Face. He also directed the 3D horror film The Mad Magician 1954 with Vincent Price and Mary Murphy.

Brahm was born in Hamburg, Germany. He was the son of German actor Ludwig Brahm and the nephew of European theatrical impresario Otto Brahm.

John started his theatre career as an actor as a character actor. After World War I, he continued to moved between Shuttling between Vienna, Berlin and Paris, he became theatre director and was resident director for acting troupes as Deutsches Theater and the Lessing Theater, both in Berlin.

With the rise of Hitler, he first moved to England where he directed film for a while, after working as a movie production supervisor, he got a chance to direct his first film, a remake of the D.W. Griffith's 1919 silent film, by the same name as Broken Blossoms in 1936, before moving to America in 1937. The German director started in the U.S. at Columbia Pictures and eventually moved to 20th Century-Fox. He directed the ill fated Let us live, the true story of two men who were wrongly convicted for murder and almost executed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which was embarrassed by the incident and put pressure on the studio to cancel the film. The studio made the film nonetheless, but quietly, with a small budget.

Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 - April 26, 1989) was an American comedienne, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy. One of the most popular and influential stars in the United States during her lifetime, with one of Hollywood's longest careers, especially on television, Ball began acting in the 1930s, becoming both a radio actress and B-movie star in the 1940s, and then a television star during the 1950s. She was still making films in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu, which produced many successful and popular television series.

Ball was nominated for an Emmy Award thirteen times, and won four times. In 1977 Ball was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986 and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.

George Henry Sanders (3 July 1906 – 25 April 1972) was a Russian-born English film and television actor, singer-songwriter, music composer, and author. His prominent English accent and baritone voice often led him to be cast as sophisticated but villainous characters. He is perhaps best known as Addison DeWitt in All About Eve (1950), Jack Favell in Rebecca (1940), and the malevolent tiger Shere Khan in The Jungle Book (1967). His career spanned more than 40 years.

Sanders was born in Saint Petersburg, Imperial Russia, at number 6 Petrovski Ostrov. His English parents were Henry Sanders (1873–1961) and Margaret Sanders (1875–1967). Actor Tom Conway (1904–1967) was his elder brother. His younger sister, Margaret Sanders, was born in 1912. George was 11 when, in 1917, at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, the family went back to England. Like his brother, he attended Brighton College, a boys' independent school in Brighton, Sussex, then went on to Manchester Technical College. After graduation he worked at an advertising agency, where the company secretary, aspiring actress Greer Garson, suggested he take up a career in acting.