An only child.
Appeared on the Thanksgiving Day cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1918, marching beside (and hungrily eyeing) a turkey.
By the mid-1940s, his personal and professional life were at such a low point that he was seriously considering committing suicide. His plan was to jump from the mountains above Santa Monica, but on his walk he met a priest and told him the whole story. The priest encouraged him to make a novena, instead. At the end of the nine days of prayer, he was offered an acting job from Universal Studios and never looked back.
Distant cousin of Margaret Hamilton.
He made 268 films, both sound and silent, and played opposite such stars as Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Constance Bennett, Ann Sothern and Jean Arthur.
In Since You Went Away (1944) he appears only in a photograph. All of his scenes were edited out and left on the cutting room floor before final release.
Is the only actor to play Commissioner Gordon from the "Batman" franchise who shared the character's first name, James. Like both of his live-action successors (Martin Patterson Hingle [Pat Hingle] and Leonard Gary Oldman [Gary Oldman]), he goes by his middle name.
Raised in a devoutly Roman Catholic household.
Strikingly handsome in his youth, Hamilton--along with John Barrymore, Fredric March and Brian Donlevy--modeled as the Arrow (Shirt) Collar Man, and received more fan mail in the 1920s than box-office king Rudolph Valentino.
Was the only member of the supporting cast of "Batman" (1966) to be in every single episode of the series.