Ernest Cossart (24 September 1876 – 21 January 1951) was a British-born Hollywood actor. Born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, his real name was Emil von Holst. He was the brother of composer Gustav Holst. His daughter was the actress Valeria Cossart.

He was a clerk in a wine-maker's office before trying the stage. After appearing in Britain and South Africa, he went to America in 1908. After stage work in New York, and all over America, he went into films.

Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminski; January 18, 1913 – March 3, 1987) was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian. His best known performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire nonsense songs.

Kaye starred in 17 movies, notably The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), and — perhaps his most accomplished performance — The Court Jester (1956). His films were extremely popular, especially his bravura performances of patter songs and children's favorites such as The Inch Worm and The Ugly Duckling. He was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF in 1954 and received the French Legion of Honor in 1986 for his many years of work with the organization.

David Daniel Kaminski was born to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn. Jacob and Clara Nemerovsky Kaminski and their two sons, Larry and Mac, left Ekaterinoslav two years before his birth; he was the only one of their sons born in the United States. He spent his early youth attending Public School 149 in East New York, Brooklyn, where he began entertaining his young classmates with songs and jokes, before moving to Thomas Jefferson High School, but he never graduated. His mother died when he was in his early teens. Clara enjoyed the impressions and humor of her youngest son and always had words of encouragement for them; her death was a great loss for young Danny.

John Reginald Owen (5 August 1887 – 5 November 1972) was a British character actor. He was known for his many roles in British and American films and later in television programmes.

Owen studied at Sir Herbert Tree's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his professional debut in 1905. He went to the United States in 1920 and worked originally on Broadway in New York, but later moved to Hollywood, where he began a lengthy film career. He was always a familiar face in many MGM productions.

Owen is perhaps best known today for his performance as Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1938 film version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, a role he inherited from Lionel Barrymore, who had played the part of Scrooge on the radio every Christmas for years, after Barrymore had broken his hip in an accident.

Owen was one of only four actors to play both Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr Watson (Jeremy Brett played Watson on stage in the United States prior to adopting the mantle of Holmes on British television,Carleton Hobbs played both roles in British radio adaptations while Patrick Macnee played both roles in US television films).

Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst, 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets.

His early works show the influence of Grieg, Wagner,Richard Strauss and fellow student Ralph Vaughan Williams, and later, through Vaughan Williams, the music of Ravel. The combined influence of Ravel, Hindu spiritualism and English folk tunes enabled Holst to free himself of the influence of Wagner and Strauss and to forge his own style. Holst's music is well known for unconventional use of metre and haunting melodies.

Holst composed almost 200 works, including operas, ballets, choral hymns and songs. An enthusiastic educator, Holst became music master at St Paul's Girls' School in 1905 and director of music at Morley College in 1907, continuing in both posts until retirement. He also taught singing at Wycombe Abbey School from 1912 until 1917.

He was the brother of Hollywood actor Ernest Cossart and father of the composer and conductor Imogen Holst, who wrote a biography of him in 1938.

Deanna Durbin (born Edna Mae Durbin, December 4, 1921) is a Canadian-born, Southern California-raised retired singer and actress, who appeared in a number of musical films in the 1930s and 1940s singing standards as well as operatic arias.

Durbin made her first film appearance in 1936 with Judy Garland in Every Sunday, and subsequently signed a contract with Universal Studios. Her success as the ideal teenage daughter in films such as Three Smart Girls (1936) was credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy. In 1938 Durbin was awarded the Academy Juvenile Award.

Later, as she matured, Durbin grew dissatisfied with the girl-next-door roles assigned to her, and attempted to portray a more womanly and sophisticated style. The film noir Christmas Holiday (1944) and the whodunit Lady on a Train (1945) were, however, not as well received as her musical-comedies and romances had been.

Durbin withdrew from Hollywood and retired from acting and singing in 1949. She married film producer-director Charles Henri David in 1950, and the couple moved to a farmhouse in the outskirts of Paris. Since then she has withdrawn from public life, but was immortalized for withdrawing by Tom Lehrer in the introduction to Whatever became of Hubert? on That Was the Year That Was in 1965.