Elmer Fryer · Public domain

An actor who defined the Hollywood gangster picture with Little Caesar in 1931, then spent the following decades proving he was far more than that type, from the film noir classics Double Indemnity and The Woman in the Window to a Cannes Best Actor award for House of Strangers. Off-screen he was an early and outspoken critic of Nazism, giving over $250,000 to war-relief and refugee organizations through the 1930s and 40s — activism that made him a target of the Hollywood blacklist era, though he was ultimately cleared of any Communist involvement.