Trivia: The epitome of the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" mentality and "Que Sera Sera" mantra, Doris Day has weathered the numerous storms of both career and personal life, using these carefree and easygoing sentiments as a testament to the endearing endurance and eternal optimism that defines her infectiously positive outlook on life.Born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff in Evanston, OH, Day's optimistic philosophies would be tested from her earliest experiences. With childhood dreams of becoming a ballerina dashed after being involved in a near-fatal car crash, Day took to heart her mother's suggestion of refining her skills as a vocalist. Possessing a voice of distinct beauty at the youthful age of 14, Day was soon discovered by a vocal coach who arranged an appearance on a local radio station WLW. The rest, as they say, is history.Soon after her radio appearance, Day was approached by local bandleader Barney Rapp, leading the young songstress to adopt the moniker that would soon become a household name. Revealing her birth name to Rapp after auditioning with the song "Day By Day," Rapp jokingly suggested that her name was nice, though a little long for the theater's marquee. With her auditioning ballad becoming the inspiration for her stage persona, 14-year-old Day now had all the makings of a starlet ripe with potential. Discovered shortly after by big-band maestro Les Brown in 1940, Day toured briefly with his band, soon departing to accept the marriage proposal of sweetheart Al Jorden and pursue dreams of starting a family. Day's matrimonial happiness was short-lived, however, when Jorden's violent and jealous tendencies proved to be too much to take. Soon after the birth of their son in 1942, the couple divorced and Day rejoined Les Brown and his band, leading to the collaboration that would project the young singer into the heart of millions -- "Sentimental Journey."Day's contribution to film began with her appearance in Warner Bros.' romantic musical Romance on the High Seas (1948). The film, in which she co-starred with Jack Carson, was recognized with an Oscar nomination for the song "It's Magic," providing young Day with her first success as a pop singer. Throughout the 1950s, Day's wholesome image sustained her film career with successful turns in musicals (Calamity Jane [1953]) and romantic comedies (Teacher's Pet [1958]). Day's successful film career continued well into the 1960s with highlights including Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Pajama Game (1957), and Pillow Talk (1959). The latter is considered among the best of the Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedies, with her image as the innocently alluring virgin breathing new life into her previously wholesome persona.In April of 1968, just as she was beginning five-year contract with CBS for The Doris Day Show, Day's film career came to an abrupt end with the death of her husband/manager/producer Marty Melcher. Left penniless and deep in debt through a series of Melcher's sordid investments, Day soon bounced back. Awarded a 22-million-dollar settlement, Day found success in television with The Doris Day Show. Her future television ventures, including Doris Day Today (1975) and Doris Day's Best Friends (1985) (which included one of the last appearances of a gravely ill Rock Hudson) were just a few examples of Day's enthusiastic and enduring nature. In 1975 Doris Day authored her biography, Doris Day: Her Own Story, which became a number one best-seller. Day went on to become an active and vocal supporter of animal rights, focusing the majority of her attentions on her Animal League and Animal Foundation organizations, as well as owning the pet-friendly Cypress Inn in Carmel, CA.

Trivia: Born in Illinois, Howard Keel was raised in California by his widowed mother. Here he supported himself with odd jobs after high-school graduation, vaguely holding out hopes of becoming a professional singer. His first gig was as a singing busboy at a Los Angeles cafe for the princely wage of $15 per week. Temporarily discouraged, Keel took a job at Douglas Aircraft; the executive staff, impressed by Keel's movie-star looks and pleasant baritone, sent the young man out on a tour of Douglas' other plants, where as a "manufacturing representative" he entertained the workers while they hastened to meet their wartime quotas. After winning several singing contests, Keel was hired by Rodgers and Hammerstein; he replaced John Raitt in the Broadway production of Carousel and played Curley in the London staging of Oklahoma. It was while in England that Keel, billed as Harold Keel, made his film debut in a villainous role in The Small Voice (1949). He was brought back to Hollywood to play Frank Butler in MGM's filmization of Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun. This led to leading roles in such subsequent big-budget MGM musicals as Showboat (1951), Lovely to Look At (1952), Kiss Me Kate (1953), Rose Marie (1954), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Kismet (1955) and Jupiter's Darling (1955). Ever on the lookout for a straight, nonsinging role, Keel was occasionally satisfied with such films as Callaway Went Thataway (1951) (in which he essayed a dual role), Desperate Search (1953) and The Big Fisherman (1959). After parting company with MGM, Keel appeared in nightclub and touring companies, often in the company of his frequent MGM co-star Kathryn Grayson, and also starred in several medium-budget westerns; he also was cast in the British sci-fi classic Day of the Triffids (1963). Howard Keel's most recent on-camera credit was the sizeable supporting role of Clayton Farrow on the TV series Dallas.

Trivia: Gamine-like Canadian singer-dancer Allyn Ann McLerie built her reputation on Broadway, where she made her debut at 16 in the chorus of One Touch of Venus. She rose to stardom playing soubrette roles in such hits as Leonard Bernstein's On the Town and Irving Berlin's Miss Liberty Four years after her tentative movie debut in the 1948 MGM feature Words and Music Ms. McLerie won a Warner Bros. contract when she repeated her Broadway role of Amy Spettigue in the film version of Frank Loesser's Where's Charley? Rapidly outgrowing the wearisome ingenues assigned her by the studio, Allyn temporarily retired in 1954. Resuming her acting, singing and dancing lessons in the mid-1960s, Allyn slowly reemerged as a versatile character actress, popping up in such small but powerful roles as Red Buttons' psychotic dance partner in They Shoot Horses, Don't They (1969) and the "wrong" White House source in All the President's Men (1976). On TV, she played spinsterish secretary Janet Reubner on The Tony Randall Show (1976-78), while on the 1987 critic's darling Days and Nights of Molly Dodd she portrayed Molly's divorced mother. Allyn Ann McLerie has been married twice, to actor/playwright/lyricist Adolph Green and to Broadway leading man George Gaynes.

Trivia: Comic actor Dick Wesson, he of the crew-cut hair and toothy grin, began his career in nightclubs in a double act with his brother Gene. Wesson spent virtually his entire film career at Warner Bros., providing genial comedy relief to such Technicolor musicals as About Face (1952), The Desert Song (1953) and Calamity Jane (1953). After playing a dyspeptic assistant director in Jerry Lewis' The Errand Boy, Wesson began appearing on episodes of sitcoms like The Beverly Hillbillies, Maude, and the TV weekly Friends and Lovers, while working as a producer for the hit series Petticoat Junction. He then retired from the spotlight, and passed away from a heart attack in 1996. Dick Wesson was the father of actress Eileen Wesson.

Trivia: Beefy, muscular leading man Philip Carey entered films in 1951, shortly after his hitch in the Marines was up. Cutting quite a dashing figure in a 19th-century military uniform, Carey was most often cast as an American cavalry officer. In a similar vein, he appeared as Canadian-born Lt. Michael Rhodes on the 1956 TV series Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers. Curiously, he never appeared in any of director John Ford's cavalry films, though he did co-star in Ford's Mister Roberts (1955) and The Long Gray Line (1955). In 1959, Carey starred in a TV series based on Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe. While no one could fault his performance in the role, the Philip Marlowe series survived but a single season. He is best known for his four subsequent TV assignments: as spokesperson for the regionally aired Granny Goose potato chips commercials, as forever-flustered Lt. Parmalee on the comedy Western Laredo (1966-1968), as narrator of the documentary series Untamed World (1968-1975), and, from 1980-2007, as eternally scheming patriarch Asa Buchanan on the daytime soap opera One Life to Live. One of Philip Carey's least typical TV appearances was on a 1971 All in the Family episode, in which he played Archie Bunker's macho-man bar buddy -- who turns out to be a homosexual.

Trivia: Not to be confused with the popular radio commentator of the same name, American stage actor Paul Harvey made his first film in 1917. Harvey appeared in a variety of character roles, ranging from Sheiks (Kid Millions [34]) to Gangsters (Alibi Ike [35]) before settling into his particular niche as one of Hollywood's favorite blowhard executives. Looking for all the world like one of those old comic-strip bosses who literally blew their tops (toupee and all), Harvey was a pompous target ripe for puncturing by such irreverent comics as Groucho Marx (in A Night in Casablanca [46]) and such down-to-earth types as Doris Day (April in Paris [54]). Paul Harvey's final film role was a typically imperious one in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (55); Harvey died of thrombosis shortly after finishing this assignment.

Trivia: The aptly nicknamed Chubby Johnson didn't give up his journalism career for the movies until he was nearly 50. After a brief tenure as comical sidekick to Republic cowboy star Allan "Rocky" Lane, Johnson became a freelance character actor, appearing opposite practically everyone from Randolph Scott to Ronald Reagan to Will Rogers Jr. Extremely active on television, he was seen on a regular basis as Concho in the 1963 TV Western Temple Houston. Chubby Johnson remained in films until 1969.

Trivia: Statuesque brunette actress Gale Robbins started out as a model and nightclub singer. Entering films in 1944, Robbins spent most of her screen time playing alluring temptresses and brassy showgirls, bearing such character names as Dawn, Dixie, Shirlee, and Ruby. In 1950's The Fuller Brush Girl, she socks across a sizzling striptease rendition of "Put the Blame on Mame"; and in 1953's Calamity Jane, she is briefly seen as the pink-tight-clad Chicago songstress Adelaide Adams, wowing the first-nighters with her performance of "It's Harry I'm Planning to Marry." Retiring in 1958, Robbins made a brief comeback on the nightclub trail nearly 20 years later. Gale Robbins was 58 years old when she died of lung cancer in 1980.

Trivia: The career of American comic actor Billy Bletcher stretched from the silent era through the late 1960s. He began performing in vaudeville at age 19 and began his screen career at the Vitagraph Studios, Brooklyn in 1913. While there, he sometimes directed John Bunny comedies. He and his wife Arline came to Hollywood in 1917 where he became a stock comic for Mack Sennett's troupe and played in many two-reelers. Bletcher's career didn't really take off until the early 1920s when he teamed up with Billy Gilbert. Together they appeared in a number of Hal Roach two-reelers. Bletcher later appeared as Spanky's father in the "Our Gang" shorts. He also provided voices for Disney cartoon characters and in features such as The Wizard of Oz (as a Munchkin). Bletcher also did voiceovers on television. His last film appearance was in 1969.

Trivia: Wisconsonite actor Stanley Blystone was the brother of director John G. Blystone and assistant director Jasper Blystone. Entering films in 1915, the burly, muscular, mustachioed Blystone excelled in gruff, villainous roles; he was particularly menacing as a crooked ringmaster in Tom Mix's The Circus Ace (1927). In the talkie era, Blystone was busiest at the 2-reel comedy mills of RKO, Columbia and Hal Roach, often cast as brutish authority figures at odds with the comedy leads. In the Three Stooges' Half Shot Shooters (1936), he plays the sadistic Sgt. McGillicuddy, who reacts to the Stooges' ineptness by taking aim with a long-range cannon and blowing the three comedians right out of their boots! Blystone was much in demand as both "action" and "brains" heavies in Columbia's westerns and serials of the 1940s. Extending his activities to television in the 1950s, the 71-year-old Stanley Blystone was en route to Desilu Studios to play a small role on the TV series Wyatt Earp when he collapsed on the sidewalk and died of heart failure.

Trivia: Perennial western supporting actor Budd Buster acted under his own, somewhat show-bizzy given name, and briefly under the "nom de stage" of George Selk. His earliest recorded screen credits occur in 1935. Buster continued laboring in B westerns for the next quarter century, spending a great deal of his time at such Poverty Row concerns as Grand National and PRC (where he showed up in 44 oaters over an eight-year period). Budd Buster's final appearance was a bit in the Alan Ladd big-budgeter Guns of the Timberland (1960).

Trivia: A genuine westerner, Lane Chandler, upon leaving Montana Wesleyan College, moved to LA and worked as a garage mechanic while seeking out film roles. After several years in bit parts, Chandler was signed by Paramount in 1927 as a potential western star. For a brief period, both Chandler and Gary Cooper vied for the best cowboy roles, but in the end Paramount went with Cooper. Chandler made several attempts to establish himself as a "B" western star in the 1930s, but his harsh voice and sneering demeanor made him a better candidate for villainous roles. He mostly played bits in the 1940s, often as a utility actor for director Cecil B. DeMille. The weather-beaten face and stubbly chin of Lane Chandler popped up in many a TV and movie western of the 1950s, his roles gradually increasing in size and substance towards the end of his career.

Trivia: The grandson of a governor of New Mexico, pioneering screen cowboy Edmund Cobb began his long career toiling in Colorado-produced potboilers such as Hands Across the Border (1914), the filming of which turned tragic when Cobb's leading lady, Grace McHugh, drowned in the Arkansas River. Despite this harrowing experience, Cobb continued to star in scores of cheap Westerns and was making two-reelers at Universal in Hollywood by the 1920s. But unlike other studio cowboys, Cobb didn't do his own stunts -- despite the fact that he later claimed to have invented the infamous "running w" horse stunt -- and that may actually have shortened his starring career. By the late '20s, he was mainly playing villains. The Edmund Cobb remembered today, always a welcome sign whether playing the main henchman or merely a member of the posse, would pop up in about every other B-Western made during the 1930s and 1940s, invariably unsmiling and with a characteristic monotone delivery. When series Westerns bit the dust in the mid-'50s, Cobb simply continued on television. In every sense of the word a true screen pioneer and reportedly one of the kindest members of the Hollywood chuck-wagon fraternity, Edmund Cobb died at the age of 82 at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: Veteran movie villain Kenne Duncan began plying his wicked trade in 1933. He hit his stride in the 1940s, when he was under contract to Republic Pictures. Duncan sneered and skulked his way through scores of westerns and serials, usually as the raffish aide-de-camp of the principal heavy (as in the 1941 serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel). When Republic slowed down production in the mid-1950s, Duncan reluctantly found himself in the circle of Hollywood "fringies" who populated the films of immortal bad-movie maven Ed Wood Jr. One of Kenne Duncan's final screen appearances was as phony mystic and erstwhile vampire Dr. Acula in Wood's Night of the Ghouls

Trivia: The faces of most movie extras are unmemorable blurs in the public's memory. Not so the elegant, statuesque Bess Flowers, who was crowned by appreciative film buffs as "Queen of the Hollywood Dress Extras." After studying drama (against her father's wishes) at the Carnegie Inst of Technology, Flowers intended to head to New York, but at the last moment opted for Hollywood. She made her first film in 1922, subsequently appearing prominently in such productions as Hollywood (1922) and Chaplin's Woman of Paris (1923). Too tall for most leading men, Flowers found her true niche as a supporting actress. By the time talkies came around, Flowers was mostly playing bits in features, though her roles were more sizeable in two-reel comedies; she was a special favorite of popular short-subject star Charley Chase. Major directors like Frank Lloyd always found work for Flowers because of her elegant bearing and her luminescent gift for making the people around her look good. While generally an extra, Flowers enjoyed substantial roles in such films as Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), Gregory La Cava's Private Worlds and Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937). In 1947's Song of the Thin Man, the usually unheralded Flowers was afforded screen billing. Her fans particularly cherish Flowers' bit as a well-wisher in All About Eve (1950), in which she breaks her customary screen silence to utter "I'm so happy for you, Eve." Flowers was married twice, first to Cecil B. DeMille's legendary "right hand man" Cullen Tate, then to Columbia studio manager William S. Holman. After her retirement, Bess Flowers made one last on-camera appearance in 1974 when she was interviewed by NBC's Tom Snyder.

Trivia: A tough-looking character actor in Grade-Z Westerns of the 1940s, Terry Frost's screen career was highly affected by a role he didn't get to play. In 1945, Frost, who had been portraying henchmen in Westerns since 1941, was signed to star the title role in Dillinger, a low-budget but highly publicized melodrama depicting the exploits of real life gangster and Public Enemy Number One, John Dillinger. The proposed screenplay, however, came in for intense scrutiny by the Production Code censors and when the cameras finally rolled, the part had been re-cast with newcomer Lawrence Tierney, who thus embarked on a long and profitable career portraying public enemies. Frost, in contrast, returned to the realm of low-budget oaters, laboring rather anonymously in countless Western melodramas for also-ran studios Monogram and PRC. He was even busier on television in the 1950s, appearing in seemingly every Western series ever produced, from The Gene Autry Show to Gunsmoke to Rawhide. In his later years, the erstwhile vaudevillian and coffee shop owner became a popular guest speaker at various B-Western conventions, where he would reminisce about everyone from Johnny Mack Brown to Whip Wilson. His death was attributed to a heart attack.

Trivia: Robert Fuller spent his first decade in show business trying his best to avoid performing. After his film debut in 1952's Above and Beyond, Fuller studied acting with Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse but never exhibited any real dedication. He tried to become a dancer but gave that up as well, determining that dancing was "sissified." Fuller rose to nominal stardom fairly rapidly in the role of Jess Harper on the popular TV western Laramie (1959-63). Once he found his niche in cowboy attire, he stuck at it in another series, Wagon Train, turning down virtually all offers for "contemporary" roles. When westerns began dying out on television in the late 1960s, Fuller worked as a voiceover actor in commercials, earning some $65,000 per year (a tidy sum in 1969). On the strength of his performance in the Burt Topper-directed motorcycle flick The Hard Ride, Fuller was cast by producer Jack Webb as chief paramedic Kelly Brackett on the weekly TVer Emergency, which ran from 1972 through 1977. In 1994, Robert Fuller was one of several former TV western stars who showed up in cameo roles in the Mel Gibson movie vehicle Maverick.

Trivia: A Native American stunt man from Philadelphia, Augie Gomez (born Augustine Whitecloud) played countless thugs and henchmen in B-Westerns and serials, notably for Republic Pictures and PRC. His career lasted into the television era, where he was a frequent guest star on the Cisco Kid program.

Trivia: American actor Dick Wessel had a face like a Mack Truck bulldog and a screen personality to match. After several years on stage, Wessel began showing up in Hollywood extra roles around 1933; he is fleetingly visible in the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933), Laurel and Hardy's Bonnie Scotland (1935), and the Columbia "screwball" comedy She Couldn't Take It (1935). The size of his roles increased in the '40s; perhaps his best feature-film showing was as the eponymous bald-domed master criminal in Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946). He was a valuable member of Columbia Pictures' short subject stock company, playing a variety of bank robbers, wrestlers, jealous husbands and lazy brother-in-laws. Among his more memorable 2-reel appearances were as lovestruck boxer "Chopper" in The Three Stooges' Fright Night (1947), Andy Clyde's invention-happy brother-in-law in Eight Ball Andy (1948), and Hugh Herbert's overly sensitive strongman neighbor in Hot Heir (1947). Wessel was shown to good (if unbilled) advantage as a handlebar-mustached railroad engineer in the superspectacular Around the World in 80 Days (1956), and had a regular role as Carney on the 1959 TV adventure series Riverboat. Dick Wessel's farewell screen appearance was as a harried delivery man in Disney's The Ugly Dachshund (1965).