Trivia: The quintessential blue-eyed, blonde-haired, freckle-faced Boy Next Door, Van Johnson was the son of a Rhode Island plumbing contractor. Making his Broadway bow in The New Faces of 1936, Johnson spent several busy years as a musical-comedy chorus boy. After understudying Gene Kelly in Pal Joey, he came to Hollywood to recreate his minor role in the film version of the Broadway musical hit Too Many Girls. Proving himself an able actor in the Warner Bros. "B" picture Murder in the Big House (1942), Johnson was signed by MGM, where he was given the traditional big buildup. He served his MGM apprenticeship as Lew Ayres' replacement in the "Dr. Kildare" series, latterly known as the "Dr. Gillespie" series, in deference to top-billed Lionel Barrymore. While en route to a preview showing of an MGM film, Johnson was seriously injured in an auto accident. This proved to be a blessing in disguise to his career: the accident prevented his being drafted into the army, thus he had the young leading-man field virtually to himself at MGM during the war years. Delivering solid dramatic performances in such major productions as The Human Comedy (1943) A Guy Named Joe (1943) and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Johnson rapidly became a favorite with the public--particularly the teenaged female public. He remained a favorite into the 1950s, alternating serious characterizations with lightweight romantic fare. One of his best roles was Lt. Maryk in The Caine Mutiny (1954), for which he was loaned to Columbia. When his MGM contract came to an end, Johnson free-lanced both in Hollywood and abroad. He also made his London stage debut as Harold Hill in The Music Man, a role he'd continue to play on the summer-theater circuit well into the 1970s. His TV work included the lead in the elaborate 1957 musical version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin (released theatrically in 1961) and his "special guest villain" turn as The Minstrel on Batman (1967). He staged a film comeback as a character actor in the late 1960s, earning excellent reviews for his work in Divorce American Style (1967). And in the mid-1980s, Van Johnson again proved that he still had the old star quality, first as one of the leads in the short-lived TVer Glitter, then in a gently self-mocking role in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and finally as Gene Barry's replacement in the hit Broadway musical La Cage Aux Folles (1985).

Trivia: Beauty contest winner Vera Ralston made a smattering of industrial films before beginning her Hollywood career in 1952. While making films at Republic studios, Ralston changed her name to avoid being confused with Republic's reigning queen Vera Hruba Ralston; "Miles" was the last name of her first husband. At first cast as a bland ingenue, she proved herself capable of conveying neurotic hysteria in The Charge at Feather River (1953), playing a white girl kidnapped by Indians who was violently resistant to being returned to her real family. She met her second husband, Gordon Scott, while filming Tarzan's Hidden Jungle (1954). With her work in John Ford's The Searchers (1955), she graduated to big-budget productions. During the latter half of the 1950s, she was under contract to Alfred Hitchcock, who was impressed by the "still waters run deep" element of her performances. She played a delusional rape victim in "Revenge," the very first episode of TV's Alfred Hitchcock Presents; she was cast as Henry Fonda's beleaguered wife in Hitch's The Wrong Man (her final scene is a knockout!); and, of course, she was seen as the sister of the ill-fated Janet Leigh in Psycho, a role she flamboyantly reprised in the 1982 sequel Psycho 2. While she never quite attained full film stardom, Miles kept extremely busy in both theatrical releases and television. During the 1960s and 1970s, she was regarded as a "good luck charm" by TV producers: if she guest-starred in the pilot episode of a potential series, chances are that series would sell (among those sold were the aforementioned Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Asphalt Jungle, The Eleventh Hour, The Fugitive, Court Martial, The Outer Limits, I Spy, Gentle Ben, Cannon and Owen Marshall, Counsellor at Law). She continued to make occasional appearances until the 1995 feature Separate Lives, in which she costarred with James Belushi; afterward, she retired from acting. As of this writing, Vera Miles is still married to her fourth husband, sound engineer and mixer Bob Jones.

Trivia: Sandpaper-voiced British character actor Cecil Parker was able to channel his stuffy, aristocratic demeanor into characters of both authority and menace. Kicking off his stage career after World War I, Parker made his stage bow in 1922 and his first film appearance seven years later. In his film roles, he was frequently addressed as "Colonel," "Your Majesty," or "Your Lordship," though these titles were not always an indication of his character's basic integrity. American filmgoers of the 1930s were most familiar with Parker's portrayal of the philandering, cowardly businessman in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). He played leads in such post-World War II films as Captain Boycott (1947), The Weaker Sex (1948), The Amazing Mr. Beecham (1949), Tony Draws a Horse (1950), and I Believe in You (1952). He also played such prominent supporting roles as Britannus in Caesar and Cleopatra (1946), the usurping king in Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1956), Lord Loam in The Admirable Crichton (1957), and Jarvis Lorry in A Tale of Two Cities (1958). Cecil Parker's last film appearance was a comedy cameo in Oh, What a Lovely War (1969).

Trivia: Patricia Laffan is an English actress of stage, film, and television. Her big-screen career, which lasted from 1945 through 1965, generally took the form of small (sometimes uncredited) parts in bigger movies (The Rake's Progress, I See a Dark Stranger) and bigger roles in low-budget movies (Old Mother Riley at Home). Her two most widely seen parts came early on, as Poppaea, the decadent wife of Peter Ustinov's Nero -- with designs on Robert Taylor's Marcus Venicius -- in Quo Vadis? (1951); and as the fierce, leather-clad alien invader Nyah in the low-budget science fiction feature Devil Girl from Mars (1954), where her imperious manner, coupled with her costume, turned her into a memorably campy figure among bad-movie enthusiasts and leather fetishists for generations to come. Oddly enough, some critics who have seen Devil Girl from Mars have had relatively kind things to say about Laffan's work in the role of Nyah. As written, the part is utterly incomprehensible, much as the movie is ineptly directed; but she, like the other cast of professionals (including Joseph Tomelty and Adrienne Corri), does give it her best shot. Her height and gaunt, intense features made her difficult to cast in much other than bit or character roles on-screen, and Laffan's movie work gave way to television as the decade wore on. By the 1960s, she was mostly visible on the small screen.

Trivia: A former engineer, British actor Maurice Denham first appeared on-stage in 1934, making his London bow two years later. During his five years' wartime service, Denham built up a "man of a thousand voices" reputation on such radio series as the ITMA Show and Much-Binding-in-the-Mash. He made his first film appearance in 1947. While garnering excellent press for his stage portrayals of Macbeth and Uncle Vanya, he was usually seen in lesser roles in films, playing dozens of clergymen, detectives, politicians, prison governors, and military officers. He was also a regular on the 1971 TV series The Lotus Eaters. Maurice Denham's crowning film achievement was one in which his face was never seen: In the 1955 animated feature Animal Farm, Denham provided the voices of all the animals.

Trivia: Even in her nineties, British actress Estelle Winwood retained the wide-eyed naïveté of her ingénue days. An actress from the age of five, Winwood was trained at the Liverpool Repertory company. As an adult, she specialized in the plays of such leading theatrical lights of the early 20th century as Shaw and Galworthy. In 1918, she starred in Broadway's very first Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Why Marry?, and a few years later scored a personal triumph in The Circle. In films from 1933, Winwood was often cast as eccentric, birdlike old ladies, some few of which were capable of homicide. She is fondly remembered for such characterizations as Leslie Caron's fairy godmother in The Glass Slipper (1953) and the pass-the-hat lady in The Misfits (1961). Closing out her film career with the 1976 detective spoof Murder By Death, Estelle Winwood continued appearing on television until she passed the century mark; she died in her sleep at the age of 101.

Trivia: Irish actor Liam Redmond spent his first twelve professional years at Dublin's Abbey Players, where he made his debut in 1935's The Silver Tassel. Redmond doubled as producer in ten of the fifty Abbey productions in which he appeared. In 1947, he made his London theatrical bow in The White Steed. Seven years later, he won the George Jean Nathan award for his portrayal of Canon McCooey in The Wayward Saint. In films since 1945's I See A Dark Stranger, Liam Redmond showed up before the cameras on both sides of the Atlantic, appearing with actors ranging from Dirk Bogarde (The Gentle Gunman) to Don Knotts (The Ghost and Mr. Chicken).

Trivia: A stage actress of long standing in her native England, aristocratic leading lady Isobel Elsom made her first Broadway appearance in 1926. Her biggest stage hit was in the role of the wealthy murder victim in 1939's Ladies in Retirement, a role she repeated (after a two-year, nonstop theatrical run) in the 1941 film version. Nearly always cast as a stately lady of fine breeding, Elsom played everything from Gary Cooper's soon-to-be mother-in-law in Casanova Brown (1946) to a movie studio executive in Jerry Lewis' The Errand Boy (1962). She was also seen as Mrs. Eynesford-Hill in the 1964 movie adaptation of My Fair Lady. At one time married to director Maurice Elvey, Isobel Elsom was sometimes billed under the last name of another husband, appearing as Isobel Harbold.

Trivia: Tall, grim-faced British actor Martin Benson worked concurrently on stage and in films throughout the late 1940s. Benson's piercing eyes and steely voice were essential equipment in costume dramas and adventure films well into the 1980s. He is most familiar to American audiences for his portrayal of the dour Kralahome in The King and I (1956) and his interpretation of Mr. Solo, the ill-tempered American gangster with a "pressing engagement," in Goldfinger (1964). For 39 weeks in 1957, Martin Benson appeared as the Duke de Medici on the weekly Renaissance-based TV adventure series Sword of Freedom.

Trivia: British music-hall performer Queenie Leonard made her film bow in 1937's The Show Goes On. Possessed of a wicked wit and boundless energy, Leonard quickly became a "pet" of Hollywood's British colony when she moved to the U.S. in 1940. With the exception of The Lodger (1944), few of her film appearances captured her natural effervescence; for the most part, she was cast as humorless domestics in such films as And Then There Were None (1944) and Life with Father (1947). In the 1950s and 1960s, she provided delightful voiceovers for such Disney cartoon features as Peter Pan (1953) and 101 Dalmatians (1961). Queenie Leonard was married twice, to actor Tom Conway and to art director Lawrence Paul Williams.

Trivia: More familiar for his radio work than his film appearances, American actor Ben Wright was active professionally from the early '40s. Dialects were a specialty with Wright, as witness his two-year hitch as Chinese bellhop Hey Boy on the radio version of Have Gun Will Travel. Most of Wright's film roles were supporting or bit appearances in such productions as A Man Called Peter (1955), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), and The Fortune Cookie (1964). On TV, Wright was one of Jack Webb's stock company (including fellow radio veterans Virginia Gregg, Stacy Harris, and Vic Perrin) on the '60s version of Dragnet. Ben Wright's most frequently seen film appearance was as the humorless Nazi functionary Herr Zeller in the 1965 megahit The Sound of Music.

Trivia: A busy child actor in his native London, Reginald Sheffield was 12 years old when he made his film debut in 1913. Sheffield's later movie credits included the starring role in the 1923 version of David Copperfield. Moving to Hollywood in 1929, he was unable to secure leading parts, but kept active as a character actor until his death in 1957. His more memorable Hollywood roles included Secretary of War Newton Baker in Wilson (1945), President Ulysses S. Grant in Centennial Summer (1946), and Julius Caesar in The Story of Mankind (1957); he also essayed small roles in both versions of De Mille's The Buccaneer. Reginald Sheffield was the father of Johnny Sheffield, who rose to fame as Boy in the Tarzan films of the 1930s and 1940s, and who later starred in Monogram's Bomba the Jungle Boy series.

Trivia: British actor Michael Trubshawe played character and cameo roles in a number of films. He was a close army buddy of actor David Niven. To pay tribute to his friend, Niven made sure that Trubshawe's name was mentioned in every film he made after 1938. In 1970, Trubshawe retired from films.