Trivia: Steely jawed, hard bodied, terse in speech, Charlton Heston was an American man's man, an epic unto himself. While he played modern men, he was at his best when portraying larger-than-life figures from world history, preferably with his shirt off. He was born John Charles Carter on October 4, 1924 and originally trained in the classics in Northwestern University's drama program, gaining early experience playing the lead in a 1941 filmed school production of Peer Gynt. He also performed on the radio, and then went on to serve in the Air Force for three years during WWII. Afterwards, he went to work as a model in New York, where he met his wife, fellow model Lydia Clarke, to whom he remained married until his death. Later the two operated a theater in Asheville, North Carolina where Heston honed his acting skills. He made his Broadway debut in Katharine Cornell's 1947 production of Anthony and Cleopatra and subsequently went on to be a staple of the highly-regarded New York-based Studio One live television anthology where he played such classic characters as Heathcliff, Julius Caesar and Petruchio. The show made Heston a star. He made his Hollywood film debut in William Dieterle's film noir Dark City playing opposite Lizabeth Scott. Even though she was more established in Hollywood, it was Heston who received top billing. He went on to appear as a white man raised in Indian culture in The Savage (1952) and then as a snob who snubs a country girl in King Vidor's Ruby Gentry (1952). His big break came when Cecil B. DeMille cast him as the bitter circus manager Brad Braden in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). In subsequent films, Heston began developing his persona of an unflinching hero with a piercing blue-eyed stare and unbending, self-righteous Middle American ethics. Heston's heroes could be violent and cruel, but only when absolutely necessary. He began a long stint of playing historical characters with his portrayal of Buffalo Bill in Pony Express and then Andrew Jackson in The President's Lady (both 1953). Heston's star burned at its brightest when DeMille cast him as the stern Moses in the lavish The Ten Commandments (1956). From there, Heston went on to headline numerous spectaculars which provided him the opportunity to play every one from John the Baptist to Michelangelo to El Cid to General "Chinese" Gordon. In 1959, Heston won an Academy Award for the title role in William Wyler's Ben Hur. By the mid-1960s, the reign of the epic film passed and Heston began appearing in westerns (Will Penny) and epic war dramas (Midway). He also did sci-fi films, the most famous of which were the campy satire Planet of the Apes (1968), The Omega Man (1970) and the cult favorite Soylent Green (1973). The '70s brought Heston into a new kind of epic, the disaster film, and he appeared in three, notably Airport 1975. From the late '80s though the '90s, Heston has returned to television, appearing in series, miniseries and made-for TV movies. He also appeared in such films as Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996) and 1998's Armageddon (as the narrator).Outside of his film work, Heston served six terms as the president of the Screen Actors Guild and also chaired the American Film Institute. Active in such charities as The Will Rogers Institute, he was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 1977 Oscar ceremony. Known as a conservative Republican and proud member of the National Rifle Association, Heston worked closely with his long-time colleague and friend President Ronald Reagan as the leader of the president's task force on arts and the humanities. He made two of his final film appearances in the disastrous Warren Beatty-Diane Keaton sex farce Town and Country (2001) (in a parodistic role, as a shotgun wielding arsonist who burns Beatty's cabin to the ground) and as himself in Michael Moore's documentary Bowling For Columbine (2002) (in which he stormed out of an interview after Moore pummeled him with gun-related questions). Heston died in the spring of 2008 at age 84; although the cause of death was officially undisclosed, he had revealed several years prior that he was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.

Trivia: Born Emmanuel Goldenberg, Edward G. Robinson was a stocky, forceful, zesty star of Hollywood films who was best known for his gangsters roles in the '30s. A "little giant" of the screen with a pug-dog face, drawling nasal voice, and a snarling expression, he was considered the quintessential tough-guy actor. Having emigrated with his family to the U.S. when he was ten, Robinson planned to be a rabbi or a lawyer, but decided on an acting career while a student at City College, where he was elected to the Elizabethan Society. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on a scholarship, and, in 1913, began appearing in summer stock after changing his name to "Edward G." (for Goldenberg). Robinson debuted on Broadway in 1915, and, over the next 15 years, became a noted stage character actor, even co-writing one of his plays, The Kibitzer (1929). He appeared in one silent film, The Bright Shawl (1923), but not until the sound era did he begin working regularly in films, making his talkie debut in The Hole in the Wall (1929) with Claudette Colbert. It was a later sound film, 1930's Little Caesar, that brought him to the attention of American audiences; portraying gangster boss Rico Bandello, he established a prototype for a number of gangster roles he played in the ensuing years. After being typecast as a gangster he gradually expanded the scope of his roles, and, in the '40s, gave memorable "good guy" performances as in a number of psychological dramas; he played federal agents, scientists, Biblical characters, business men, bank clerks, among other characters. The actor experienced a number of personal problems during the '50s. He was falsely linked to communist organizations and called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (eventually being cleared of all suspicion). Having owned one of the world's largest private art collections, he was forced to sell it in 1956 as part of a divorce settlement with his wife of 29 years, actress Gladys Lloyd. Robinson continued his career, however, which now included television work, and he remained a busy actor until shortly before his death from cancer in 1973. His final film was Soylent Green (1973), a science fiction shocker with Charlton Heston. Two months after his death, Robinson was awarded an honorary Oscar "for his outstanding contribution to motion pictures," having been notified of the honor before he died. He was also the author of a posthumously published autobiography, All My Yesterdays (1973).

Trivia: Sylphlike actress LeighTaylor-Young first came to the attention of televiewers in 1966, when she was cast as Rachael Welles on the nighttime soap Peyton Place. She rose to film prominence with a series of "flower child" characterizations, notably the hash-brownie baking heroine of I Love You, Alice B. Toklas. Previously wed to her Peyton Place co-star Ryan O'Neal, Taylor-Young began curtailing her acting appearance upon her 1978 marriage to Columbia Pictures executive Guy McElwane. She reemerged as a character actress in the early 1980s, essaying such meaty film roles as the surprise murder witness in The Jagged Edge (1985), and playing recurring characters on such series as The Devlin Connection (1982, as Lauren Dane), The Hamptons (1983, as Lee Chadway) and Dallas (1987-88 season, as Kimberly Cryder). In 1993, Leigh Taylor-Young won an Emmy award for her ongoing portrayal of Rachel Harris on the weekly TVer Picket Fences.

Trivia: Chuck Connors attended Seton Hall University before embarking on a career in professional sports. He first played basketball with the Boston Celtics, then baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Chicago Cubs. Hardly a spectacular player -- while with the Cubbies, he hit .233 in 70 games -- Connors was eventually shipped off to Chicago's Pacific Coast League farm team, the L.A. Angels. Here his reputation rested more on his cut-up antics than his ball-playing prowess. While going through his usual routine of performing cartwheels while rounding the bases, Connors was spotted by a Hollywood director, who arranged for Connors to play a one-line bit as a highway patrolman in the 1952 Tracy-Hepburn vehicle Pat and Mike. Finding acting an agreeable and comparatively less strenuous way to make a living, Connors gave up baseball for films and television. One of his first roles of consequence was as a comic hillbilly on the memorable Superman TV episode "Flight to the North." In films, Connors played a variety of heavies, including raspy-voiced gangster Johnny O in Designing Woman (1957) and swaggering bully Buck Hannassy in The Big Country (1958). He switched to the Good Guys in 1958, when he was cast as frontiersman-family man Lucas McCain on the popular TV Western series The Rifleman. During the series' five-year run, he managed to make several worthwhile starring appearances in films: he was seen in the title role of Geronimo (1962), which also featured his second wife, Kamala Devi, and originated the role of Porter Ricks in the 1963 film version of Flipper. After Rifleman folded, Connors co-starred with Ben Gazzara in the one-season dramatic series Arrest and Trial (1963), a 90-minute precursor to Law and Order. He enjoyed a longer run as Jason McCord, an ex-Army officer falsely accused of cowardice on the weekly Branded (1965-1966). His next TV project, Cowboy in Africa, never got past 13 episodes. In 1972, Connors acted as host/narrator of Thrill Seekers, a 52-week syndicated TV documentary. Then followed a great many TV guest-star roles and B-pictures of the Tourist Trap (1980) variety. He was never more delightfully over the top than as the curiously accented 2,000-year-old lycanthrope Janos Skorzeny in the Fox Network's Werewolf (1987). Shortly before his death from lung cancer at age 71, Chuck Connors revived his Rifleman character Lucas McCain for the star-studded made-for-TV Western The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1993).

Trivia: Born to a well-to-do Southern family, Joseph Cotten studied at the Hickman School of Expression in Washington D.C., and later sought out theater jobs in New York. He made his Broadway debut in 1930, and seven years later joined Orson Welles' progressive Mercury Theatre company, playing leads in such productions as Julius Caesar and Shoemaker's Holiday. He briefly left Welles in 1939 to co-star in Katharine Hepburn's Broadway comeback vehicle The Philadelphia Story. Cotten rejoinedWelles in Hollywood in 1940, making his feature-film debut as Jed Leland in Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). As a sort of private joke, Jed Leland was a dramatic critic, a profession which Cotten himself had briefly pursued on the Miami Herald in the late '20s. Cotten went on to play the kindly auto mogul Eugene Morgan in Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942, and both acted in and co-wrote Journey Into Fear, the film that Welles was working on when he was summarily fired by RKO. Cotten remained a close friend of Welles until the director's death in 1985; he co-starred with Welles in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) and played an unbilled cameo for old times' sake in the Welles-directed Touch of Evil (1958). A firmly established romantic lead by the early '40s, Cotten occasionally stepped outside his established screen image to play murderers (Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt [1943]) and surly drunkards (Under Capricorn [1949]). A longtime contractee of David O. Selznick, Cotten won a Venice Film Festival award for his performance in Selznick's Portrait of Jennie (1948). Cotten's screen career flagged during the 1950s and '60s, though he flourished on television as a guest performer on such anthologies as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Fireside Theatre, The Great Adventure, and as host of The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1955), The Joseph Cotten Show (1956), On Trial (1959), and Hollywood and the Stars (1963). He also appeared in several stage productions, often in the company of his second wife, actress Patricia Medina. In 1987, Cotten published his engagingly candid autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere. He died of pneumonia in 1994 at the age of 88.

Trivia: African American actor Brock Peters was a stage performer as early as 1943, long before he was old enough to attend CCNY. Peters made his film bow as Sgt. Brown in Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones (1954). Five years later, he appeared in another Preminger-directed musical film, playing the menacing Crown in Porgy and Bess (1959); coincidentally, he'd made his earliest stage appearance in that same Gershwin opera. Specializing in roles of unquestioned authority, Peters was at home with the villainous Rodriguez in The Pawnbroker (1965) as he was with the kindly Reverend Kumalko in Lost in the Stars (1974). Conversely, one of Peters' most impressive screen performances was as a victim; in 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird, he played accused rapist Tom Robinson. His more recent movie assignments have included Admiral Cartwright in two of the Star Trek theatrical features (numbers IV and VI), and a brace of roles previously associated with white actors: reclusive Mr. Pendergast in Polly, the 1988 musical adaptation of Pollyanna, and the fatuous Reverend Chasuble in the all-black 1992 remake of The Importance of Being Earnest. Peters also produced the 1973 film Five on the Black Hand Side, and has from time to time pursued a nightclub singing career. On television, Peters was briefly a regular on the daytime drama Young and the Restless, and supplied the voice of Lucius Fox on 1992's Batman: The Animated Series. The recipient of numerous industry awards and honors, Brock Peters was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1976.

Trivia: Tall, elegant African American musical performer Paula Kelly was the daughter of a popular nightclub and band singer of the same name; the elder Paula Kelly had been instrumental in popularizing such 1930s and 1940s standards as "Jeepers Creepers" and "Chattanooga Choo Choo." The younger Kelly launched her own career in the early 1960s. In 1969 she made her first film, re-creating her Broadway role as dance-hall girl Helene in Sweet Charity. Kelly's later films ranged from the excellent (The Andromeda Strain) to the barely tolerable (Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling). Extremely active on series TV, Paula Kelly has played such roles as public defender Liz Williams on Night Court (1984), Theresa in The Women of Brewster Place (the 1989 pilot for Oprah Winfrey's abortive weekly) and Sweets in South Central (1994).

Trivia: The son of a Toronto financier, 18-year-old Stephen Young was signed to a baseball contract with the Cleveland Indians, but his professional athletic career ended before it began when he injured his knee playing ice hockey. Young spent the next few years as a salesman for a variety of items, then took up radio and TV commercial production. While vacationing in Europe with a friend, he landed a bit part in the superproduction Cleopatra (1963), then went on to minor roles in such Spanish-filmed spectaculars as 55 Days at Peking and The Leopard. Upon returning to Toronto, Young decided to become a full-time actor. Billed under his given name of Stephen Levy, he appeared as Jack Williams on the Ontario-based daytime drama Moment of Truth (1965), and co-starred with Austin Fox on the prime time Canadian adventure series Seaway (1965-1966). He then headed to Hollywood, where he starred in a TV pilot called I Married a Bear; it didn't sell, but did lead to Young's two-season hitch as lawyer Ben Caldwell in the weekly Judd for the Defense (1967-1969). Stephen Young went on to character roles in such films as Patton (1970) and Soylent Green (1973), not to mention scores of made-for-TV movies.

Trivia: Mike Henry rose to prominence as star linebacker of the Los Angeles Rams. Handsome enough to pass as a movie star, Henry was offered any number of film and television assignments upon his retirement from the gridiron. His first TV starring role was as the army-sergeant husband of Juliet Prowse in Mona McCluskey, a 1965 sitcom that came and went in 13 weeks. Shortly afterward, Henry made his screen bow as filmdom's 14th Tarzan in Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966); he starred in two subsequent Tarzan epics before relinquishing the role to Ron Ely. Sporadically active in films ever since, Mike Henry was featured in all three Smokey and the Bandit films of the late 1970s-early 1980s.

Trivia: African-American leading actor Lincoln Kilpatrick was much in demand in the late '60s and early '70s, a time when dynamic black performers were required to make up for the years of Stepin Fetchit-style subservience. Making his first film in 1968, Kilpatrick was seen in such sociopolitical time capsules as Cool Breeze (1972), Soul Soldier (1973) and Uptown Saturday Night (1974). Looking and acting like a born survivor, Kilpatrick was vital to futuristic films like The Omega Man (1971), Soylent Green (1973), and Chosen Survivors (1974), most of which predicted a post-apocalyptic society comprised of the strongest and swiftest. As busy in TV as in films, Lincoln Kilpatrick was a regular on several series: The Leslie Uggams Show (1968) in the recurring segment "Sugar Hill;" Love of Life, wherein Kilpatrick and Rita Bond were the first black regulars on this long-running soap opera; Matt Houston (1982-85) as Lt. Hoyt; and Frank's Place (1988), as Reverend Deal.

Trivia: Whit Bissell was a familiar face to younger baby boomers as an actor mostly associated with fussy official roles -- but those parts merely scratched the surface of a much larger and longer career. Born Whitner Nutting Bissell in New York City in 1909, he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was an alumnus of that institution's Carolina Playmakers company. He made his movie debut with an uncredited role in the 1940 Errol Flynn swashbuckler The Sea Hawk and then wasn't seen on screen again for three years. Starting in 1943, Bissell appeared in small roles in a short string of mostly war-related Warner Bros. productions, including Destination Tokyo. It wasn't until after the war, however, that he began getting more visible in slightly bigger parts. He had a tiny role in the opening third of Ernst Lubitsch's comedy Cluny Brown (1946), but starting in 1947, Bissell became much more closely associated with film noir and related dark, psychologically-focused crime films. Directors picked up on his ability to portray neurotic instability and weaselly dishonesty -- anticipating the kinds of roles in which Ray Walston would specialize for a time -- and used him in pictures such as Brute Force, He Walked by Night, and The Killer That Stalked New York. His oddest and most visible portrayal during this period was in The Crime Doctor's Diary (1949), in which he had a scene-stealing turn as a mentally unhinged would-be composer at the center of a murder case. By the early 1950s, however, in addition to playing fidgety clerks, nervous henchmen, and neurotic suspects (and friends and relatives of suspects), he added significantly to his range of portrayals with his deeply resonant voice, which could convincingly convey authority. Bissell began turning up as doctors, scientists, and other figures whose outward demeanor commanded respect -- mainstream adult audiences probably remember him best for his portrayal of the navy psychiatrist in The Caine Mutiny, while teenagers in the mid-1950s may have known him best for the scientists and psychiatrists that he played in Target Earth and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But it was in two low-budget films that all of Bissell's attributes were drawn together in a pair of decidedly villainous roles, as the mad scientists at the center of I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. The latter, in particular, gave him a chance to read some very "ripe" lines with a straight face, most memorably, "Answer me! I know you have a civil tongue in your mouth -- I sewed it there myself!" But Bissell was never a one-note actor. During this same period, he was showing off far more range in as many as a dozen movies and television shows each year. Among the more notable were Shack Out on 101, in which he gave a sensitive portrayal of a shell-shocked veteran trying to deal with his problems in the midst of a nest of Soviet spies; "The Man With Many Faces" on the series Code 3, in which he was superb as a meek accountant who is pushed into the life of a felon by an ongoing family tragedy; and, finally, in "The Great Guy" on Father Knows Best, where he successfully played a gruff, taciturn employer who never broke his tough demeanor for a moment, yet still convincingly delivered a final line that could bring tears to the eyes of an audience. By the end of the 1950s, Bissell was working far more in television than in movies. During the early 1960s, he was kept busy in every genre, most notably Westerns -- he showed up on The Rifleman and other oaters with amazing frequency. During the mid-1960s, however, he was snatched up by producer Irwin Allen, who cast Bissell in his one costarring role: as General Kirk, the head of the government time-travel program Project Tic-Toc on the science-fiction/adventure series Time Tunnel. He also showed up on Star Trek and in other science-fiction series of the period and continued working in dozens of small roles well into the mid-1980s. Bissell died in 1996.

Trivia: Trained at the Royal Academy of Arts and Music in Vienna, Celia Lovsky gained popularity on the Austrian and German stage in the 1920s. When Hitler assumed power in 1933, Lovsky left for France in the company of her then-husband, actor Peter Lorre. Resettling in Hollywood in 1935, she put her career on hold during her marriage to Lorre, returning to films after their divorce (they remained friends and confidants until Lorre's death in 1964). From 1947 until her retirement in the 1960s, Lovsky was most often seen in maternal roles: George Sanders' mother in Death of a Scoundrel (1956), James Cagney's mother in Man of 1000 Faces (1957), Sal Mineo's mother in The Gene Krupa Story (1959), and so on. Star Trek devotees will remember Celia Lovsky as the Queen of Vulcana in the 1967 episode "Amok Time."

Trivia: Supporting actress Jane Dulo specialized in television comedies and was involved with the medium since the 1950s. Her television credits included regular roles on Hey, Jeannie and Sgt. Bilko, and guest appearances on series such as The Dick Van Dyke Show, McHale's Navy, and Get Smart. She made her movie debut in Roustabout (1964) and went on to have a sporadic film career. She also appeared occasionally on and off Broadway. She launched her performing career in vaudeville at age ten. Fans of the long-running TV variety show Sha Na Na may remember Dulo as the woman in the window.

Trivia: Through eight decades, actor Dick Van Patten retained the cherubic, chipmunk-cheeked countenance of his child-star days. Born into a family of actors, Van Patten was seven when he made his Broadway bow, playing Melvyn Douglas' son in Tapestry in Gray; that same year, he first stepped before a radio microphone. He would ultimately appear in over 20 Broadway productions, including Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. His co-star in this endeavor was Tallulah Bankhead, who declared that "Dickie" was the only child actor she could tolerate because he could read The Racing Form. In 1941, Van Patten and his younger sister Joyce made their joint film debut in Reg'lar Fellers, repeating their roles from the radio version of the same property. He would not again appear in a film until 1968's Charly, by which time he had played eldest son Nels Hansen in the pioneering TV sitcom Mama had made a smooth transition to adult parts in the role of Mister Roberts' Ensign Pulver, and had co-starred in such New York stage presentations as The Tender Trap, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and Don't Drink the Water. An avid tennis player, Van Patten met producer/director Mel Brooks on the courts; their personal relationship blossomed into a professional one, with Van Patten playing Friar Tuck in Brooks' 1975 TV series When Things Were Rotten and appearing in several of Brooks' theatrical features. From 1977 through 1981, Van Patten starred as Tom Bradford on the TV "dramedy" Eight is Enough. His other series-TV assignments include The Partners (1971), The New Dick Van Dyke Show (1973-74 season) and WIOU (1990). In addition to his sibling relationship with Joyce Van Patten, Dick Van Patten is the half-brother Timothy Van Patten and the father of James and Vincent Van Patten--actors all. Van Patten died in 2015, at age 86.

Trivia: Versatile American character actor Tim Herbert appeared in several films during the '60s and '70s. He got his start and later also made guest appearances in many television shows and movies.

Trivia: A stocky character actor, Dennis first appeared onscreen in 1953; he often plays no-nonsense heavies.

Trivia: Morgan Farley made his first Broadway appearance in 1918 as one of the supporting players in Booth Tarkington's Seventeen. He gained prominence in the 1920s, starring in such stage productions as Candida and An American Tragedy. After a brief flurry of film activity in 1929-1930, he returned to the stage where he remained until interrupting his career to serve in WWII. Back in films as a character actor and dialogue coach in 1946, Morgan Farley went on to essay minor roles in such films as Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar (1953), in which he was seen in the expository part of Artimedorus. He made his last screen appearance in 1967.

Trivia: Dark-eyed, exotic American actress Belle Mitchell first appeared on screen in 1928. A Theda Bara type at a time when that type was passe, Mitchell paid her bills with a series of featured roles. She was seen as Mexicans, Native Americans, Middle Easterners and Gypsies; she was most frequently cast as a maid, medium or fortune teller. Belle Mitchell was 86 when she made her last screen appearance in 1973's Soylent Green.

Trivia: As an actor Forrest Wood made his film debut with a small supporting role in The Pigeon That Took New York (1963). Prior to that, he had gained experience working on-stage with the Asheville, NC, Community Theater. Wood's films include The Omega Man (1971) and Soylent Green (1973). In addition to acting, Wood also wrote the occasional song, notably the theme song for the film Major Dundee, "Laura Lee." Wood passed away on July 21, 1998. The causes for his death were unreported.