Trivia: The rich basso voice of Italian opera star Ezio Pinza was heard in opera houses around the world. He also appeared in a couple Broadway musicals before making his way to Hollywood to star in a few films of the late '40s and early '50s that include Carnegie Hall (1947).

Trivia: One of the most glamorous superstars of Hollywood's golden era, Lana Turner was born February 8, 1921, in Wallace, ID. At the age of 15, while cutting school, she was spotted by Hollywood Reporter staffer Billy Wilkinson in a Hollywood drugstore; enchanted by her beauty, he escorted her to the offices of the Zeppo Marx Agency, resulting in a bit part in 1937's A Star Is Born. Rejected by RKO, Fox, and any number of other studios, Turner next briefly showed up in They Won't Forget. Mervin LeRoy, the picture's director, offered her a personal contract at 50 dollars a week, and she subsequently appeared fleetingly in a series of films at Warner Bros. When LeRoy moved to MGM, Turner followed, and the usual series of bit parts followed before she won her first lead role in the 1939 B-comedy These Glamour Girls. Dancing Co-Ed, a vehicle for bandleader Artie Shaw, followed that same year, and after starring in 1940's Two Girls on Broadway, she and Shaw married. Dubbed "the Sweater Girl" by the press, Turner was touted by MGM as a successor to Jean Harlow, but audiences did not take her to heart; she did, however, become a popular pin-up, especially with American soldiers fighting overseas. In 1941 she starred opposite Clark Gable in Honky Tonk, her first major hit. They again teamed in Somewhere I'll Find You the next year. Upon separating from Shaw, Turner married actor Stephen Crane, but when his earlier divorce was declared invalid, a media frenzy followed; MGM chief Louis B. Mayer was so incensed by the debacle that he kept the now-pregnant Turner off movie screens for a year. Upon returning in 1944's Marriage Is a Private Affair, Turner's stardom slowly began to grow, culminating in her most sultry and effective turn to date as a femme fatale in 1946's The Postman Always Rings Twice. The film was a tremendous success, and it made Turner one of Hollywood's brightest stars. Both 1947's Green Dolphin Street and Cass Timberlane were hits, but a 1948 reunion with Gable in Homecoming failed to re-create their earlier sparks. After appearing in The Three Musketeers, she disappeared from screens for over a year, resurfacing in the George Cukor trifle A Life of Her Own. Turner's box-office stock was plummeting, a situation which MGM attempted to remedy by casting her in musicals; while the first, 1951's Mr. Imperium, was an unmitigated disaster, 1952's The Merry Widow was more successful. However, a string of failures followed, and after 1955's Diane, MGM opted not to renew her contract.When Turner's next project, The Rains of Ranchipur, also failed to ignite audience interest, she again took a sabbatical from movie-making. She returned in 1957 with Peyton Place, director Mark Robson's hugely successful adaptation of Grace Metalious' infamous best-seller about the steamy passions simmering beneath the surface of small-town life. Turner's performance won an Academy Award nomination, and the following year she made international headlines when her lover, gangster Johnny Stampanato, was stabbed to death by her teenage daughter, Cheryl Crane; a high-profile court trial followed, and although Crane was eventually acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide, Turner's reputation took a severe beating. The 1959 Douglas Sirk tearjerker Imitation of Life was Turner's last major hit, however, and after a string of disappointments culminating in 1966's Madame X, she did not reappear in films for three years, returning with The Big Cube. Also in 1969, she and George Hamilton co-starred in the short-lived television series The Survivors. After touring in a number of stage productions, Turner starred in the little-seen 1974 horror film Persecution, followed in 1976 by Bittersweet Love. Her final film, Witches' Brew, a semi-comic remake of the 1944 horror classic Weird Woman, was shot in 1978 but not widely released until 1985. In 1982, she published an autobiography, Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth, and also began a stint as a semi-regular on the TV soap opera Falcon Crest. After spending the majority of her final decade in retirement, Lana Turner died June 29, 1995, at the age of 74.

Trivia: Scratchy-voiced American character actress who appeared in dozens of Hollywood vehicles following years on the Chautauqua and Orpheum circuits, Marjorie Main eventually worked with W.C. Fields on Broadway, where she appeared in several productions. Widowed in 1934, she entered films in 1937, repeating her Broadway stage role as the gangster's mother in Dead End (1937). Personally eccentric, Main had an almost pathological fear of germs. Best known among her close to 100 film appearances, most for MGM, are Stella Dallas (1937), Test Pilot (1938), Too Hot to Handle (1938), The Women (1939), Another Thin Man (1939), I Take This Woman (1940), Susan and God (1940), Honky Tonk (1941), Heaven Can Wait (1943), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Murder, He Says (1945), The Harvey Girls (1946), Summer Stock (1950), The Long, Long Trailer (1954), Rose Marie (1954), and Friendly Persuasion (1956). Starting with their appearances in The Egg and I (1947), which starred Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert, Main and Percy Kilbride became starring performers as Ma and Pa Kettle in a series of rural comedies.

Trivia: Actor Barry Sullivan was a theater usher and department store employee at the time he made his first Broadway appearance in 1936. His "official" film debut was in the 1943 Western Woman of the Town, though in fact Sullivan had previously appeared in a handful of two-reel comedies produced by the Manhattan-based Educational Studios in the late '30s. A bit too raffish to be a standard leading man, Sullivan was better served in tough, aggressive roles, notably the title character in 1947's The Gangster and the boorish Tom Buchanan in the 1949 version of The Great Gatsby. One of his better film assignments of the 1950s was as the Howard Hawks-style movie director in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). Sullivan continued appearing in movie roles of varying importance until 1978. A frequent visitor to television, Barry Sullivan starred as Sheriff Pat Garrett in the 1960s Western series The Tall Man, and was seen as the hateful patriarch Marcus Hubbard in a 1972 PBS production of Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest.

Trivia: British actor Sir Cedric Hardwicke's physician father was resistant to his son's chosen profession; nonetheless, the elder Hardwicke paid Cedric's way through the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. The actor was fortunate enough to form a lasting friendship with playwright George Bernard Shaw, who felt that Hardwicke was the finest actor in the world (Shaw's other favorites were the Four Marx Brothers). Working in Shavian plays like Heartbreak House, Major Barbara and The Apple Cart throughout most of the 1920s and 1930s in England, Hardwicke proved that he was no one-writer actor with such roles as Captain Andy in the London production of the American musical Show Boat. After making his first film The Dreyfus Case in 1931, Hardwicke worked with distinction in both British and American films, though his earliest attempts at becoming a Broadway favorite were disappointments. Knighted for his acting in 1934, Hardwicke's Hollywood career ran the gamut from prestige items like Wilson (1944), in which he played Henry Cabot Lodge, to low-budget gangster epics like Baby Face Nelson (1957), where he brought a certain degree of tattered dignity to the role of a drunken gangland doctor. As proficient at directing as he was at acting, Hardwicke unfortunately was less successful as a businessman. Always a step away from his creditors, he found himself taking more and more journeyman assignments as he got older. Better things came his way with a successful run in the 1960 Broadway play A Majority of One and several tours with Charles Laughton, Agnes Moorehead and Charles Boyer in the "reader's theatre" staging of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell. A talented writer, Hardwicke wrote two autobiographies, the last of these published in 1961 as A Victorian in Orbit. It was here that he wittily but ruefully observed that "God felt sorry for actors, so he gave them a place in the sun and a swimming pool. The price they had to pay was to surrender their talent."

Trivia: Actor Keenan Wynn was the son of legendary comedian Ed Wynn and actress Hilda Keenan, and grandson of stage luminary Frank Keenan. After attending St. John's Military Academy, Wynn obtained his few professional theatrical jobs with the Maine Stock Company. After overcoming the "Ed Wynn's Son" onus (his father arranged his first job, with the understanding that Keenan would be on his own after that), Wynn developed into a fine comic and dramatic actor on his own in several Broadway plays and on radio. He was signed to an MGM contract in 1942, scoring a personal and professional success as the sarcastic sergeant in 1944's See Here Private Hargrove (1944). Wynn's newfound popularity as a supporting actor aroused a bit of jealousy from his father, who underwent professional doldrums in the 1940s; father and son grew closer in the 1950s when Ed, launching a second career as a dramatic actor, often turned to his son for moral support and professional advice. Wynn's film career flourished into the 1960s and 1970s, during which time he frequently appeared in such Disney films as The Absent-Minded Professor (1960) and The Love Bug (1968) as apoplectic villain Alonso Hawk. Wynn also starred in such TV series as Troubleshooters and Dallas. Encroaching deafness and a drinking problem plagued Wynn in his final years, but he always delivered the goods onscreen. Wynn was the father of writer/director Tracy Keenan Wynn and writer/actor Edmund Keenan (Ned) Wynn.

Trivia: At the peak of her career, actress Debbie Reynolds was America's sweetheart, the archetypal girl-next-door. Best remembered for her work in Hollywood musicals, she appeared in the genre's defining moment, Singin' in the Rain, as well as many other notable successes. Born Mary Frances Reynolds on April 1, 1932, in El Paso, TX, she entered the film industry by winning the Miss Burbank beauty contest in 1948, resulting in a contract with Warner Bros. However, the studio cast her in small roles in only two films -- 1948's The June Bride and 1950's The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady -- and she soon exited for the greener pastures of MGM, where she first appeared in Three Little Words. A more significant turn in 1950's Two Weeks With Love garnered Reynolds strong notices, and soon she was touted as the new Judy Garland, with a role in 1951's Mr. Imperium also on the horizon.Though star Gene Kelly initially opposed her casting in his 1952 musical Singin' in the Rain, Reynolds acquitted herself more than admirably alongside the likes of Donald O'Connor and Jean Hagen, and the film remains one of the greatest Hollywood musicals ever produced. A series of less distinguished musicals followed, among them 1953's I Love Melvin, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, and Give a Girl a Break. On loan to RKO, she scored a major success in 1954's Susan Slept Here, and upon returning to MGM she was awarded with a new and improved seven-year contract. However, the studio continued to insert Reynolds into lackluster projects like the health-fad satire Athena and the musical Hit the Deck. Finally, in 1955, she appeared opposite Frank Sinatra in the hit The Tender Trap, followed by a well-regarded turn as a blushing bride in The Catered Affair a year later.Additionally, Reynolds teamed with real-life husband Eddie Fisher in the musical Bundle of Joy. The couple's children also went on to showbiz success: Daughter Carrie Fisher became a popular actress, novelist, and screenwriter, while son Todd became a director. In 1957, Reynolds starred in Tammy and the Bachelor, the first in a series of popular teen films which also included 1961's Tammy Tell Me True, 1963's Tammy and the Doctor, and 1967's Tammy and the Millionaire. Her other well-received films of the period included 1959's It Started With a Kiss, 1961's The Pleasure of His Company, and 1964's The Unsinkable Molly Brown, for which she earned an Academy Award nomination. In 1959, Reynolds' marriage to Fisher ended in divorce when he left her for Elizabeth Taylor. The effect was an outpouring of public sympathy which only further increased her growing popularity, and it was rumored that by the early '60s, she was earning millions per picture. By the middle of the decade, however, Reynolds' star was waning. While described by the actress herself as her favorite film, 1966's The Singing Nun was not the hit MGM anticipated. Its failure finally convinced the studio to offer her roles closer to her own age, but neither 1967's Divorce American Style nor the next year's How Sweet It Is performed well, and Reynolds disappeared from the screen to mount her own television series, the short-lived Debbie Reynolds Show. In 1971, she appeared against type in the campy horror picture What's the Matter with Helen?, but when it too failed, she essentially retired from movie making, accepting voice-over work as the title character in the animated children's film Charlotte's Web but otherwise remaining away from Hollywood for over a decade.Reynolds then hit the nightclub circuit, additionally appearing on Broadway in 1974's Irene. In 1977, she also starred in Annie Get Your Gun. By the 1980s, Reynolds had become a fixture in Las Vegas, where she ultimately opened her own hotel and casino, regularly performing live in the venue's nightclub and even opening her own museum of Hollywood memorabilia. In 1987, she reappeared in front of the camera for the first time in years in the TV movie Sadie and Son, followed in 1989 by Perry Mason: The Case of the Musical Murder. In 1992, Reynolds appeared briefly as herself in the hit film The Bodyguard, and a small role in Oliver Stone's 1993 Vietnam tale Heaven and Earth marked her second tentative step toward returning to Hollywood on a regular basis. Finally, in 1996 she accepted the title role in the acclaimed Albert Brooks comedy Mother, delivering what many critics declared the best performance of her career. The comedies Wedding Bell Blues and In and Out followed in 1996 and 1997. She continued to work in animated projects, and often allowed herself to be interviewed for documentaries about movie and dance history. She made a cameo as herself in Connie and Carla, and in 2012 she had her most high-profile gig in quite some time when she was cast as Grandma Mazur in One for the Money. In 2015, Reynolds was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Reynolds died in 2016, at age 84, just one day after her daughter Carrie Fisher died.

Trivia: Belgian actress Ann Codee toured American vaudeville in the 'teens and twenties in a comedy act with her husband, American-born Frank Orth. The team made its film debut in 1929, appearing in a series of multilingual movie shorts. Thereafter, both Codee and Orth flourished as Hollywood character actors. Codee was seen in dozens of films as florists, music teachers, landladies, governesses and grandmothers. She played a variety of ethnic types, from the very French Mme. Poullard in Jezebel (1938) to the Teutonic Tante Berthe in The Mummy's Curse (1961). Ann Codee's last film appearance was as a tight-corseted committeewoman in Can-Can (1960).

Trivia: In films from 1945, Wilton Graff carved a screen career out of playing judges, doctors, DAs and the like. Graff's movie assignments ranged from bits in "A" pictures to sizeable supporting roles in programmers. He could be seen as the maitre d' in the crucial Gregory Peck-John Garfield restaurant scene in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and as Baron Fitzwalter, Robin Hood's father-in-law, in Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950). Wilton Graff's only starring role was as Dr. Belleau, the crazed sportsman who hunted human quarry in the 1961 Most Dangerous Game knock-off Bloodlust.

Trivia: American actor Chick Chandler was an army brat, the son of a much-travelled military surgeon. Chandler was groomed for a career in uniform, but he dropped out of military school and headed for Hollywood. He worked as a prop man and gopher before making his first film appearance in 1925's Red Love. Polishing his craft in vaudeville and legitimate theatre, Chandler was much in demand once the movies began to talk in 1929. He starred in his own series of two-reelers at RKO, and also made feature-film appearances in such RKO features as Melody Cruise and Murder on a Honeymoon. By the mid-1930s, Chandler was an accomplished monologist and hoofer, enabling him to attain a 20th Century-Fox contract. Perhaps too brash and abrasive to make it as a leading man, Chandler nonetheless thrived as a supporting actor. Once in a while he'd play the romantic lead, but it was usually in poverty-row items like PRC's Seven Doorways to Death (1943). While he remained in films until the late 1960s, it was television that afforded Chick Chandler his most substantial latter-day assignments: he co-starred with John Russell on the 1955 syndicated adventure weekly Soldiers of Fortune, and was a regular as the hero's father on the 1961 "newlywed" sitcom One Happy Family.

Trivia: Character actor Joseph Vitale had a busy career in feature films and on 1950s and 1960s television in shows such as Superman, The Lone Ranger, Wagon Train, and Rawhide.

Trivia: A top athlete at Brown University, Don Haggerty performed military service and did stage work before his movie-acting debut in 1947. Free-lancing, Haggerty put in time at virtually every studio from Republic to MGM, playing roles of varying sizes in films like Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) The Asphalt Jungle (1951), Angels in the Outfield (1951) and The Narrow Margin (1952). Most often, he was cast as a big-city detective or rugged westerner. During the first (1955-56) season of TV's The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Haggerty showed up semi-regularly as Marsh Murdock. Don Haggerty was the father of Grizzly Adams star Dan Haggerty.

Trivia: After a substantial stage career, American actor Cliff Clark entered films in 1937. His movie credits ranged from Mountain Music to the 1953 Burt Lancaster/Virginia Mayo affair South Sea Woman. The weather-beaten Clark usually played surly city detectives, most frequently in RKO's Falcon series of the 1940s. In 1944, Clark briefly ascended from "B"s to "A"s in the role of his namesake, famed politico Champ Clark, in the 20th Century-Fox biopic Wilson. And in the 1956 TV series Combat Sergeant, Cliff Clark was second-billed as General Harrison.

Trivia: Irish-born Matt Moore was the youngest of Hollywood's acting Moore brothers. After siblings Owen and Tom Moore had established themselves, Moore gave movies a try in 1913, and was almost immediately cast as one of the leads in the notorious Traffic in Souls (1913). His appeal fell somewhere in-between his brothers: he didn't have the charisma of Owen, but he was a far better actor than Tom. By avoiding the pitfalls of stardom, Matt Moore survived in Hollywood into the late '50s, though his leading-man days were over by 1930 and he had to be content with character parts. RKO's 1929 talkie Side Street gives modern viewers a rare opportunity to see all three Moore brothers in the same picture -- with Matt, the youngest, appearing to be the most mature of the group.

Trivia: Husky actor Mitchell Lewis attended Annapolis and Syracus University before making his stage debut in 1902. Lewis went on tour with such theatrical heavyweights as William Collier, Dustin Farnum and Alla Nazimova. He made his film bow in 1914 at the old Thanhouser Company. Specializing in ethnic roles, Lewis spent both the silent and talkie era playing menacing gypsies (The Cuckoos, The Bohemina Girl), Arab potentates (he was horse-loving Sheik Iderim in the 1926 version of Ben-Hur), East Indian warriors and Native American chiefs. He even donned blackface to portray "Tambo" in Al Jolson's Big Boy (1930). In 1937, Lewis was signed to an MGM lifetime contract, which assured him steady if not always stellar work for the next eighteen years. One of his many MGM bit-part assignments was the green-skinned Winkie Captain ("You've killed her! She's dead! Long live Dorothy!") in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Active throughout his career in charitable pursuits, Mitchell Lewis served on the original board of the Motion Picture Relief Fund.

Trivia: Actor, magician, and standup comedian Arthur Walsh specialized in light dramas and romantic fare during the '40s and '50s. For his live act, Walsh billed himself as Madman Walsh and Slippery. In addition to his film career, Walsh also appeared on television during the '50s and '60s as a guest star on shows such as I Love Lucy and Laugh-In.

Trivia: Both his parents were vaudeville and burlesque performers. His first job was selling pralines on street corners in the French Quarter of New Orleans when he was 8 years old. Took the name "Richard" after an uncle who paid for his college tuition. Was an obese child, weighing 200 lbs in the eighth grade and 268 lbs when he graduated high school. Considered becoming a priest before entering college to study art. While living in Florence, Italy as an exchange student, he appeared in many television commercials including one where he played a dancing meatball. Around the age of 20 he lost 149 lbs in two and a half months. His starvation diet landed him in the hospital and caused all his hair to fall out. The experience inspired him to learn about healthy dieting and exercise. Owns 400 pairs of his trademark Dolfin brand shorts. Collects art glass and dolls, and has over 400 dolls he displays on a rotating basis at his Hollywood Hills home. His 65 fitness videos have sold over 20 million copies. With the help of Congressmen Zach Wamp and Ron Kind, he introduced the Fit Kids Bill in favor of funding physical education in schools and has testified on its behalf.

Trivia: A professional pilot, mustachioed Richard Simmons was reportedly discovered by Louis B. Mayer while vacationing on a dude ranch near Palm Springs, CA. Mayer signed the strapping six-footer to a stock contract right then and there, promising the neophyte "outdoor roles." As it turned out, the tycoon couldn't quite keep his promise and Simmon's roles -- in such fare as Sergeant York (1941), Thousands Cheer (1943), Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1946), and Battle Circus (1953) -- proved minor. In fact, the actor had to pay his dues in little more than walk-ons for nearly a decade before finally reaching stardom -- and then it was on the small screen. Filmed in color in central California, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon teamed Simmons with Yukon King, a handsome malamute, and Rex, an equally impressive stallion, and the trio became a mainstay on children's television from 1955 to 1958 and in syndication ever since. Simmons, who also guest starred on such shows as Perry Mason, Rawhide, The Brady Bunch, and ChiPS, should not be confused with the frenetic video exercise guru of the same name.

Trivia: A nightclub dancer in her teens, Mae Clarke rose to prominence on the Broadway musical stage of the 1920s. In films, Clarke nearly always seemed predestined for tragedy and abuse: she played the long-suffering bride of the title character in Frankenstein (1931), the self-sacrificing trollop Molly Molloy in The Front Page (1931), and the streetwalker protagonist in Waterloo Bridge (1931). Clarke's most famous film role was one for which she received no onscreen credit: she was the recipient of James Cagney's legendary "grapefruit massage" in 1931's Public Enemy. Clarke went on to co-star with Cagney in such films as Lady Killer (1933) and Great Guy (1936); though the best of friends in real life, Cagney and Clarke usually seemed poised to bash each other's brains out onscreen. For reasons that still remain unclear, Clarke's starring career plummeted into bit roles and walk-ons by the 1950s. Her most rewarding work during that decade was on television -- it was Clarke who portrayed a middle-aged woman undergoing menopause on a controversial 1954 installment of the TV anthology Medic. Even during her career low points, Clarke retained her sense of humor. When applying for a role on one TV program, she advertised herself as a comedian, listing as a "qualification" the fact that she was at one time married to Fanny Brice's brother. Mae Clarke continued accepting minor film roles until 1970, when she retired to the Motion Picture Country Home at Woodland Hills, California.