Of all the actors who started their career in the silent era, Wallace Beery wins for sheer chameleonic longevity. His long slow morph from handsome young comic (or villain, as the script demanded) in the silent era, to lumpen, crass character actor by the 1940s remains unique. (The way every one of his co-stars, from Robert Young to Margaret O'Brien, violently hated him after working with him was also unique.) He and Marie Dressler made a successful comic team in movies like Tugboat Annie (1933), but after Dressler's death MGM needed a new female foil for Beery. Marjorie Main of "Ma Kettle" fame was not thrilled to hear she'd been selected to co-star in this tale of a wayward skipper (Beery) and his rocky romance with the local store owner's daughter (Main), since she and Beery had worked together in Wyoming (1940) and hated each other. (Her by-the-book professionalism (and teetotaling) clashed with Beery's improvisations, coarse tongue, and heavy drinking.) But Louis B. Mayer thought they were great together and signed Main and Beery to a seven-picture deal, beginning with Jackass Mail (1942).

By Violet LeVoit