On the left of this scene from State Of The Union (1948) with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn is Adolphe Menjou, another very adaptable and charismatic supporting Hollywood actor of the Thirties and Forties.

He was brilliant as defending counsel for Ginger Rogers in Roxie Hart (1942), a film packed with other famous supporting actors of the day, including Milton Parsons, Lynne Overman and William Fawley.

Menjou vied vehemently with Eugene Pallette for the title of Hollywood's best-dressed man and was, surprisingly, a supporter of the McCarthy witch-hunts.

In a more serious mode, he more than adequately coped in The Hucksters (1947) alongside other almost irreplaceable stock players of his day, among them Sidney Greenstreet and Edward Arnold.

Menjou did fail miserably, though, when trying to record a song called Two White Arms from his film of the same name. The Gramophone magazine of May 1932 stated: "He sings persistently flat and has no voice to begin with." He was not invited back to record the other side of the Columbia record.

-Gordon Dean, St Luke's Road, Brighton