Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (20 October 1882 – 16 August 1956), commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his career.

Lugosi, the youngest of four children, was born as Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in Lugos (at the time part of Austria–Hungary, now Lugoj in Romania), to Paula de Vojnich and István Blaskó, a banker. He later based his last name on his hometown. He and his sister Vilma were raised in a Roman Catholic family. At the age of 12, Lugosi dropped out of school. He began his acting career probably in 1901 or 1902. His earliest known performances are from provincial theaters in the 1903–1904 season, playing small roles in several plays and operettas. He went on to Shakespeare plays and other major roles. Moving to Budapest in 1911, he played dozens of roles with the National Theater of Hungary in the period 1913–1919. Although Lugosi would later claim that he "became the leading actor of Hungary's Royal National Theater", almost all his roles there were small or supporting parts.

William Henry Pratt (23 November 1887 – 2 February 1969), better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.

Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). His popularity following Frankenstein was such that for a brief time he was billed simply as "Karloff" or "Karloff the Uncanny." His best-known non-horror role is as the Grinch, as well as the narrator, in the animated television special of Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966).

Karloff was born at 36 Forest Hill Road, Honor Oak, London, England, where a blue plaque can now be seen. His parents were Edward John Pratt, Jr. and Eliza Sarah Millard. His paternal grandparents were Edward John Pratt, an Anglo-Indian,^{[citation needed]} and Eliza Julia (Edwards) Pratt, a sister of Anna Leonowens (whose tales about life in the royal court of Siam [now Thailand] were the basis of the musical The King and I). The two sisters were also of Anglo-Indian heritage.

Sammy Petrillo (October 24, 1934 – August 15, 2009) was an American nightclub and movie comedian best known as a Jerry Lewis lookalike.

Sammy Petrillo was born Sammy Patrello in The Bronx, New York City, New York, to a show-business family in which his mother, Anne Jackowitz Patrello, was Alice Faye's double, and his father, Abraham Patrello, "was a comic and a hoofer" [dancer] who performed in Catskills Mountains resorts and went by the stage name Skelly Petrillo. By age six, Sammy would sometimes join his father onstage.

Petrillo, who had one younger sibling, brother Marvin, was raised in a housing project at 143rd Street and Morris Avenue, and attended the High School of Performing Arts, in Manhattan.

In a 1992 interview, he recalled the genesis of his Jerry Lewis look:

After finagling a meeting with famed comic Milton Berle, then rehearsing at Nova Studios in New York City, Petrillo recalled, Berle sent Petrillo and Berle's agent, Herb Jaffee, to meet with Jerry Lewis at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in Manhattan. Lewis, after overcoming his initial trepidation — "Jerry said a couple of derogatory things to me", Petrillo recalled in the same interview. "He said something to the effect of, 'Don't sign any checks and tell people you're Jerry Lewis!' He wasn't being funny. He was being serious" — hired the 16-year-old Petrillo for a sketch with him on NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour television series. Petrillo rehearsed "for about a week over at the Mayflower Catering Hall on West 43rd Street", and was paid "about $60" for playing Lewis' baby in a crib, though only at the end of the sketch, in which Petrillo has no lines. The episode ran November 12, 1950.

David Manners (April 30, 1900 – December 23, 1998) was a Canadian - American film actor.

Born Rauff de Ryther Daun Acklom in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Manners came to Hollywood at the beginning of the talking films revolution after studying acting with Eva Le Gallienne, and acting on stage with Helen Hayes. His family moved to New York City in 1907 and to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York in 1922.

In spite of his father's protestations of his thespian ambitions and his even having studied forestry (which bored him) at the University of Toronto, Manners resolutely pursued a stage career and appeared in both Broadway and out-of-town productions, one of which caused Le Gallienne to comment that he was "a very bad actor."

Manners was serendipitously "discovered" by the film director James Whale at a Hollywood party, and within a few years, he was a popular leading man, playing opposite such up and coming actresses as Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Gloria Stuart, Myrna Loy, Loretta Young, and Ann Dvorak, and he was paired several times with Helen Chandler.

Adrienne Ames (August 3, 1907 – May 31, 1947) was an American film actress.

Born Adrienne Ruth McClure in Fort Worth, Texas, Ames began her film career in 1927 as a stand-in for Pola Negri. Ames was soon cast in small film roles in silent films. With the advent of talking pictures, Ames' popularity grew and she was usually cast as society women, or in musicals. She made thirty films during the 1930s with her biggest success in George White's Scandals (1934), a film which was also notable as the debut of Alice Faye. Ames also appeared with the three leading men from the 1931 version of Dracula (Bela Lugosi, David Manners, and Edward Van Sloan) in The Death Kiss (1932). By the end of the decade Ames' popularity had diminished and, discouraged, she left Hollywood for New York.

In 1941 she became a radio personality, headlining a talk show on station WHN in New York City. Her program was successful, and was scheduled regularly until just before her death in 1947.

Ames was married three times, including to actor Bruce Cabot from 1933 until 1937. Ames died of cancer on May 31, 1947 in New York City. She is interred in the Oakwood Cemetery in her hometown of Fort Worth, Texas.