Trivia: In the first ten years of his life, Raymond Burr moved from town to town with his mother, a single parent who supported her little family by playing the organ in movie houses and churches. An unusually large child, he was able to land odd jobs that would normally go to adults. He worked as a ranch hand, a traveling tinted-photograph salesman, a Forest service fire guard, and a property agent in China, where his mother had briefly resettled. At 19, he made the acquaintance of film director Anatole Litvak, who arranged for Burr to get a job at a Toronto summer-stock theater. This led to a stint with a touring English rep company; one of his co-workers, Annette Sutherland, became his first wife. After a brief stint as a nightclub singer in Paris, Burr studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and took adult education courses at Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Chunking. His first New York theatrical break was in the 1943 play Duke in Darkness. That same year, his wife Sutherland was killed in the same plane crash that took the life of actor Leslie Howard. Distraught after the death of his wife, Burr joined the Navy, served two years, then returned to America in the company of his four-year-old son, Michael Evan Burr (Michael would die of leukemia in 1953). Told by Hollywood agents that he was overweight for movies, the 340-pound Burr spent a torturous six months living on 750 calories per day. Emerging at a trim 210 pounds, he landed his first film role, an unbilled bit as Claudette Colbert's dancing partner in Without Reservations (1946). It was in San Quentin (1946), his next film, that Burr found his true metier, as a brooding villain. He spent the next ten years specializing in heavies, menacing everyone from the Marx Brothers (1949's Love Happy) to Clark Gable (1950's Key to the City) to Montgomery Clift (1951's A Place in the Sun) to Natalie Wood (1954's A Cry in the Night). His most celebrated assignments during this period included the role of melancholy wife murderer Lars Thorwald in Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and reporter Steve Martin in the English-language scenes of the Japanese monster rally Godzilla (1956), a characterization he'd repeat three decades later in Godzilla 1985. While he worked steadily on radio and television, Burr seemed a poor prospect for series stardom, especially after being rejected for the role of Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke on the grounds that his voice was too big. In 1957, he was tested for the role of district attorney Hamilton Burger in the upcoming TV series Perry Mason. Tired of playing unpleasant secondary roles, Burr agreed to read for Burger only if he was also given a shot at the leading character. Producer Gail Patrick Jackson, who'd been courting such big names as William Holden, Fred MacMurray, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr., agreed to humor Burr by permitting him to test for both Burger and Perry Mason. Upon viewing Burr's test for the latter role, Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner jumped up, pointed at the screen, and cried "That's him!" Burr was cast as Mason on the spot, remaining with the role until the series' cancellation in 1966 and winning three Emmies along the way. Though famous for his intense powers of concentration during working hours -- he didn't simply play Perry Mason, he immersed himself in the role -- Burr nonetheless found time to indulge in endless on-set practical jokes, many of these directed at his co-star and beloved friend, actress Barbara Hale. Less than a year after Mason's demise, Burr was back at work as the wheelchair-bound protagonist of the weekly detective series Ironside, which ran from 1967 to 1975. His later projects included the short-lived TVer Kingston Confidential (1976), a sparkling cameo in Airplane 2: The Sequel (1982), and 26 two-hour Perry Mason specials, lensed between 1986 and 1993. Burr was one of the most liked and highly respected men in Hollywood. Fiercely devoted to his friends and co-workers, Burr would threaten to walk off the set whenever one of his associates was treated in a less than chivalrous manner by the producers or the network. Burr also devoted innumerable hours to charitable and humanitarian works, including his personally financed one-man tours of Korean and Vietnamese army bases, his support of two dozen foster children, and his generous financial contributions to the population of the 4,000-acre Fiji island of Naitauba, which he partly owned. Despite his unbounded generosity and genuine love of people, Burr was an intensely private person. After his divorce from his second wife and the death from cancer of his third, Burr remained a bachelor from 1955 until his death. Stricken by kidney cancer late in 1992, he insisted upon maintaining his usual hectic pace, filming one last Mason TV movie and taking an extended trip to Europe. In his last weeks, Burr refused to see anyone but his closest friends, throwing "farewell" parties to keep their spirits up. Forty-eight hours after telling his longtime friend and business partner Robert Benevides, "If I lie down, I'll die," 76-year-old Raymond Burr did just that -- dying as he'd lived, on his own terms.

Trivia: The scion of a wealthy Detroit family, William Talman would later claim that he learned to "champion the underdog" while a member of his Episcopal church boxing team. In his 20s, Talman became an evangelist for the Moral Re-Armament Movement, and later made at stab at studying law. He drifted to New York, where, through the intervention of an actor friend of his father, he began picking up small stage roles. After extensive experience in New York and in the touring company of Of Mice and Men, Talman moved to Hollywood, where in 1949 he played his first important screen role as a gangster in Red, Hot and Blue (1949). At his best when his characters were at their worst, Talman developed into one of Tinseltown's most fearsome screen villains, never more so than when he played a psycho killer who slept with one eye open in the noir classic The Hitchhiker (1955). In 1957, Talman was cast as Hamilton Burger, the perennially losing District Attorney on the popular TV weekly Perry Mason. He remained with the series until March of 1960, when he was arrested for throwing a wild party where vast quantities of illegal substances were consumed. The Perry Mason producers had every intention of firing Talman from the series, but he was reinstated thanks to the loyal intervention of his co-stars -- particularly Raymond Burr, who threatened to quit the show if Talman wasn't given a second chance. William Talman was last seen on TV in a series of anti-smoking public service announcements; these spots were run posthumously, at Talman's request, following his death from lung cancer at the age of 53.

Trivia: Though his early career seemed to hold the promise of major stardom for actor Ryan O'Neal, matters didn't pan out and he has become more famous for his long-term live-in relationship with 1970s poster girl-turned-movie star-of-the-week actress Farrah Fawcett than any of his '80s and '90s films. Still, O'Neal is an appealing actor and his clean-cut good looks and reddish- blond hair give him an exuberant boyishness that belies his age. His first major role was that of Rodney Harrington on the television soap opera Peyton Place (1964-1969). O'Neal is the son of screenwriter Charles O'Neal and actress Patricia Callaghan O'Neal. A California native, he spent much of his childhood living abroad. As a young man, O'Neal sometimes got into trouble and at one point served a 51-day jail sentence for assault and battery after getting into a fight at a New Year's party. Before becoming an actor, O'Neal was a lifeguard and an amateur boxer who was a one-time Golden Gloves contender. In film and television, O'Neal started out as a stunt man on Tales of the Vikings, a German television series. His parents were working on the same show. Upon his return to the States, O'Neal continued finding work in small parts on television shows, getting his first regular acting job on the Western Empire (1962). Following the demise of Peyton Place, O'Neal made his feature debut in The Big Bounce (1969), but did not get his big break until he was chosen from 300 auditioners to play Oliver Barrett opposite Ally McGraw in Arthur Hiller's maudlin adaptation of Erich Seagal's best-seller Love Story- (1970). The film was a smash hit and landed O'Neal an Oscar nomination. Two more starring roles followed this success but it was not until he played an uptight professor who finds himself beleaguered by a free-spirited, love-struck Barbra Streisand in Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up Doc? (1972) that he rivaled the success of Love Story. It has been in light, romantic fare such as this that O'Neal has excelled. His next popular role was that of an exasperated con man in Paper Moon, the charming comedy that netted his co-star and real-life daughter, Tatum O'Neal, an Oscar. O'Neal then played the title role in Stanley Kubrick's slow-paced epic Barry Lyndon (1975). By the late '70s, O'Neal's career had gone into decline and he had begun appearing in such dismal outings as Oliver's Story (the 1978 sequel to his first big hit) and The Main Event (1979) which reteamed him with Streisand. The '80s were even tougher for O'Neal, even though he appeared regularly onscreen. In 1989, O'Neal turned up in the wrenching made-for-TV-movie Small Sacrifices, which starred his lover Fawcett. Two years later, he and Fawcett starred in the short-lived television sitcom Good Sports. He followed that up with a part in the body-switch comedy Chances Are. In the nineties he appeared in the showbiz satire Burn Hollywood Burn, and the quirky detective tale Zero Effect. As the 21st century began he could be seen opposite Al Pacino in People I Know, and in the 2003 comedy Malibu's Most Wanted. After seven years away from screen, he appeared in 2012's Slumber Party Slaughter. Before hooking up with Farrah in the early '80s, O'Neal was married to actresses to Joanna Moore and Leigh Taylor-Young. His children from those marriages, Tatum and Griffin O'Neal, are both actors as is his brother Kevin O'Neal.

Trivia: Born and raised in the Greenwich Village section of New York, Douglas Fowley did his first acting while attending St. Francis Xavier Military Academy. A stage actor and night club singer/dancer during the regular theatrical seasons, Fowley took such jobs as athletic coach and shipping clerk during summer layoff. He made his first film, The Mad Game, in 1933. Thanks to his somewhat foreboding facial features, Fowley was usually cast as a gangster, especially in the Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto and Laurel and Hardy "B" films churned out by 20th Century-Fox in the late 1930s and early 1940s. One of his few romantic leading roles could be found in the 1942 Hal Roach "streamliner" The Devil with Hitler. While at MGM in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Fowley essayed many roles both large and small, the best of which was the terminally neurotic movie director in Singin' in the Rain (1952). Fowley actually did sit in the director's chair for one best-forgotten programmer, 1960's Macumba Love, which he also produced. On television, Fowley made sporadic appearances as Doc Holliday in the weekly series Wyatt Earp (1955-61). In the mid-1960s, Fowley grew his whiskers long and switched to portraying Gabby Hayes-style old codgers in TV shows like Pistols and Petticoats and Detective School: One Flight Up, and movies like Homebodies (1974) and North Avenue Irregulars (1979); during this period, the actor changed his on-screen billing to Douglas V. Fowley.

Trivia: According to her Rockford, Illinois, high-school yearbook, Barbara Hale hoped to make a career for herself as a commercial artist. Instead, she found herself posing for artists as a professional model. This led to a movie contract at RKO Radio, where she worked her way up from "B"s like The Falcon in Hollywood (1945) to such top-of-the-bill attractions as A Likely Story (1947) and The Boy With Green Hair (1949). She continued to enjoy star billing at Columbia, where among other films she essayed the title role in Lorna Doone (1952). Her popularity dipped a bit in the mid-1950s, but she regained her following in the Emmy-winning role of super-efficient legal secretary Della Street on the Perry Mason TV series. She played Della on a weekly basis from 1957 through 1966, and later appeared in the irregularly scheduled Perry Mason two-hour TV movies of the 1980s and 1990s. The widow of movie leading man Bill Williams, Barbara Hale was the mother of actor/director William Katt. Hale died in 2017, at age 94.

Trivia: The son of legendary Broadway actor DeWolfe Hopper and movie actress Hedda Hopper, William Hopper made his film debut as an infant in one of his father's films. The popular consensus is that the younger Hopper was given his first talking-picture break because of his mother's reputation as the most feared of the Hollywood gossips. Not so: Hopper was signed to his first Warner Bros. contract in 1937, a year or so before Hedda had established herself as the queen of the dirt-dishers. At first billing himself as DeWolfe Hopper Jr., Hopper languished in bit parts and walk-ons for several years. He wasn't able to graduate to better roles until the 1950s, by which time he was calling himself William Hopper. After a largely undistinguished film career (notable exceptions to his usual humdrum assignments were his roles in 20 Million Miles to Earth [1957] and The Bad Seed [1956]) Hopper finally gained fame -- and on his own merits -- as private detective Paul Drake on the enormously popular Perry Mason television series, which began its eight-season run in 1957. In a bizarre coincidence, Perry Mason left the air in 1966, the same year that William Hopper's mother Hedda passed away.

Trivia: British actor Maxwell Reed entered films in 1947. At first, Reed enjoyed star billing in such films as The Brothers (1948) and The Dark Man (1951). Later on, he settled into such secondary roles as Ajax in Helen of Troy (1955) and "murder" victim Miles Hardwicke in The Notorious Landlady (1962). In 1955, he starred on the weekly TV series Captain David Grief, filmed in Mexico. Maxwell Reed was the first husband of actress Joan Collins.

Trivia: Bald, moon-faced character actor George Cisar kept busy in a 22-year Hollywood career with roles in well over 100 film and television productions, starting in 1948 with an uncredited bit as a policeman in Henry Hathaway's Call Northside 777. Perhaps it was his rough-hewn yet genial features, coupled with an unaffected working-class accent and demeanor, but he was frequently put into police uniforms; and, in fact, many baby boomers may instantly recognize Cisar's face, if not his name, for his recurring role as the long-suffering Sgt. Mooney on the series Dennis the Menace, a part he portrayed in over two dozen episodes between 1960 and 1963. He worked in every genre from romantic comedies to Westerns, horror, and science fiction. In 1956 alone, Cisar was a barfly in Fred F. Sears' Teenage Crime Wave; a bartender in Sears' The Werewolf; and the somewhat disingenuous father of a vengeful teenager, who tries to sponsor and then derail a controversial rock & roll show, in Sears' Don't Knock the Rock. Cisar was obviously reliable, as director Sears and producer Sam Katzman -- who made those three movies -- were known for efficient filmmaking on a notoriously low budget.Cisar worked a lot for them at Columbia Pictures (which also produced Dennis the Menace), but he also did a lot of work at Ziv TV, on series such as Highway Patrol and Bat Masterson, in addition to regular appearance in Dragnet, where Jack Webb apparently liked keeping him busy and employed. Cisar could be funny or sinister, and some of his appearances were limited to a single line or two of dialogue, as in The Giant Claw (1957), where he provided a moment of comic relief (indeed, in that movie, his scene was one of the rare intentionally amusing moments). He also turned up in tiny roles in high-profile pictures such as Jailhouse Rock (1957) and Some Came Running (1958). Typically, Cisar would go from a co-starring part in a low-budget exploitation picture, such as Bernard Kowalski's Attack of the Giant Leeches, to a bit in, say, Don Siegel's Edge of Eternity, and then right on to an episode of The Untouchables (all 1959). Cisar retired at the start of the 1970s and passed away in 1979.

Trivia: Despite her claims of a Parisian birthplace and early stardom in the Folies Bèrgére, Hollywood's quintessential saucy Parisienne, Fifi D'Orsay, was actually Yvonne Lussier of Montreal. A protégée of vaudeville entertainer Gus Edwards, D'Orsay had appeared in the Greenwich Village Follies (singing "Yes, We Have No Bananas") and toured with Ed Gallagher prior to crashing Hollywood in such enjoyable, if lightweight, fare as They Had to See Paris (1929) and Hot for Paris (1930). She was pronounced one of the burgeoning sound media's first new stars, but her popularity proved brief. Today, D'Orsay is probably best remembered as the fading screen siren serenaded by Bing Crosby in Going Hollywood (1933) (the song was "Temptation") and for providing brief ooh-la-la moments in quite a few undeserving films of the late '30s and 1940s. She appeared on early television, but was decidedly a has-been when cast as the spirited Solange LaFitte in the hit Broadway musical Follies (1972). D'Orsay died at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: From a scene with Charlie Chaplin to a bit part with Elvis Presley to a familiar role as a butler in Madonna's Who's That Girl, Arthur Roland Tovey's career spanned much of the 20th century, during which he worked with some of its biggest stars. Tovey made his film debut in the 1922 Marion Davies feature Yolanda. A longtime Hollywood extra and bit actor, Tovey also doubled for Leslie Howard in the classic Gone With the Wind. In addition to his career as an actor, Tovey was a longtime member of the Musicians Local 47 and the Screen Actors Guild, and also served in the U.S. Army during WWII. In recent years, he made the most of his appearances on television, appearing on programs such as ER and Married With Children until well into his nineties. Arthur Roland Tovey died of natural causes at his home in Van Nuys, CA, on October 20, 2000. He was 95.