Trivia: Dean Martin found phenomenal success in almost every entertainment venue and, although suffering a few down times during his career, always managed to come out on top. During the '50s, he and partner Jerry Lewis formed one of the most popular comic film duos in filmdom. After splitting with Lewis, he was associated with the Hollywood's ultra-cool "Rat Pack" and came to be known as the chief deputy to the "Chairman of the Board," Frank Sinatra. Although initially a comic actor, Martin also proved himself in such dramas as The Young Lions (1958), more than holding his own opposite Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. He was also never above poking sly fun at his image as a smooth womanizer in such outings as the Matt Helm spy spoofs of the '60s. As a singer, Martin was, by his own admission, not the greatest baritone on earth, and made no bones about having copied the styles of Bing Crosby and Perry Como. He couldn't even read music, and yet recorded more than 100 albums and 500 songs, racking up major hits such as "That's Amore," "Volare," and his signature tune "Everybody Loves Somebody." Elvis Presley was said to have been influenced by him, and patterned "Love Me Tender" after his style. For three decades, Martin was among the most popular nightclub acts in Las Vegas. Although a smooth comic, he never wrote his own material. On television, Martin had a highly-rated, near-decade-long series; it was there that he perfected his famous laid-back persona of the half-soused crooner suavely hitting on beautiful women with sexist remarks that would get anyone else slapped, and making snappy, if not somewhat slurred, remarks about fellow celebrities during his famous roasts. Martin attributed his long-term TV popularity to the fact that he never put on airs or pretended to be anyone else on-stage, but that's not necessarily true. Those closest to him categorized him as a great enigma; for, despite all his exterior fame and easy-going charm, Martin was a complex, introverted soul and a loner. Even his closest friend, Frank Sinatra, only saw Martin once or twice per year. His private passions were golf, going to restaurants, and watching television. He loathed parties -- even when hosting them -- and would sometimes sneak off to bed without telling a soul. He once said in a 1978 interview for Esquire magazine, that, although he loved performing, particularly in nightclubs, if he had to do it over again he would be a professional golfer or baseball player. The son of a Steubenville, OH, barber, Martin (born Dine Crochets) dropped out of school in the tenth grade and took a string of odd jobs ranging from steel mill worker to bootlegger; at the age of 15, he was a 135-pound boxer who billed himself as "Kid Crocetti." It was from his prize-fighting years that he got a broken nose (it was later fixed), a permanently split lip, and his beat-up hands. For a time, he was involved with gambling as a roulette stickman and black jack croupier. At the same time, he practiced his singing with local bands. Billing himself as "Dino Martini," he got his first break working for the Ernie McKay Orchestra. A hernia got Martin out of the Army during WW II, and, with wife and children in tow, he worked for several bands throughout the early '40s, scoring more on looks and personality than vocal ability until he developed his own smooth singing style. Failing to achieve a screen test at MGM, Martin appeared permanently destined for the nightclub circuit until he met fledgling comic Jerry Lewis at the Glass Hat Club in New York, where both men were performing. Martin and Lewis formed a fast friendship which led to their participating in each other's acts, and ultimately forming a music/comedy team. Martin and Lewis' official debut together occurred at Atlantic City's Club 500 on July 25, 1946, and club patrons throughout the East Coast were soon convulsed by the act, which consisted primarily of Lewis interrupting and heckling Martin while the he was trying to sing, and, ultimately, the two of them chasing each other around the stage and having as much fun as possible. A radio series commenced in 1949, the same year that Martin and Lewis were signed by Paramount producer Hal Wallis as comedy relief for the film My Friend Irma. Martin and Lewis was the hottest act in nightclubs, films, and television during the early '50s, but the pace and the pressure took its toll, and the act broke up in 1956, ten years to the day after the first official teaming. Lewis had no trouble maintaining his film popularity alone, but Martin, unfairly regarded by much of the public and the motion picture industry as something of a spare tire to his former partner, found the going rough, and his first solo-starring film (Ten Thousand Bedrooms [1957]) bombed. Never totally comfortable in films, Martin still wanted to be known as a real actor. So, though offered a fraction of his former salary to co-star in the war drama The Young Lions (1957), he eagerly agreed in order that he could be with and learn from Brando and Clift. The film turned out to be the cornerstone of Martin's spectacular comeback; by the mid-'60s, he was a top movie, recording, and nightclub attraction, even as Lewis' star began to eclipse. In 1965, Martin launched the weekly NBC comedy-variety series The Dean Martin Show, which exploited his public image as a lazy, carefree boozer, even though few entertainers worked as hard to make what they were doing look easy. It's also no secret that Martin was sipping apple juice, not booze, most of the time on-stage. He stole the lovable-drunk shtick from Phil Harris; and his convincing portrayals of heavy boozers in Some Came Running (1958) and Howard Hawk's Rio Bravo (1959) led to unsubstantiated claims of alcoholism. In the late '70s, Martin concentrated on club dates, recordings, and an occasional film, and even make an appearance on the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon in 1978. (Talk of a complete reconciliation and possible re-teaming of their old act, however, was dissipated when it was clear that, to paraphrase Lewis, the men may have loved each other, but didn't like each other). Martin's even-keel world began to crumble in 1987, when his son Dean Paul was killed in a plane crash. A much-touted tour with old pals Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra in 1989 was abruptly canceled, and the public was led to believe it was due to a falling out with Sinatra; only intimates knew that Martin was a very sick man, who had never completely recovered from the loss of his son and who was suffering from an undisclosed illness. But Martin courageously kept his private life private, emerging briefly and rather jauntily for a public celebration of his 77th birthday with friends and family. Whatever his true state of health, he proved in this rare public appearance that he was still the inveterate showman. Martin died of respiratory failure on Christmas morning, 1995. He was 78.

Trivia: Perhaps no popular film artist in history inspired quite so many conflicting opinions and emotions as actor/comedian Jerry Lewis. Often reviled in his native United States but worshipped as a genius throughout much of Europe and especially France, Lewis took slapstick comedy to new realms of absurdity and outrageousness, his anarchic vision dividing audiences who found him infantile and witless from those who applauded the ambitions of his sight gags, his subversions of standard comedic patterns, and his films' acute criticisms of American values. Regardless of opinion, he was not only one of the biggest stars of the postwar era but also one of the most powerful, and as the writer, director, and producer of many of his features, he qualified as a comic auteur firmly in the tradition of Chaplin and Keaton.Born Joseph Levitch in Newark, NJ, on March 16, 1926, he was the son of borscht-belt comics, spending the majority of his childhood living with relatives but joining his parents each summer as they performed in the Catskills. From the age of five on, Lewis occasionally performed in his parents' act, and later quit high school in order to travel with his own comedy routine, which consisted primarily of mocking famous entertainers while their records were played off-stage. His early years as a performer were lean, and he often resorted to work as a soda jerk, a theater usher, an office clerk, or any one of a number of short-lived jobs. During the summers, he too made the rounds of the Catskills' borscht circuit, but otherwise enjoyed little success.In 1946, Lewis met another struggling performer, a handsome singer named Dean Martin. Later that year, while playing Atlantic City's 500 Club, another act abruptly quit the show, and Lewis suggested Martin to fill the void. Initially the two performed separately, but one night they threw out their routines and teamed on-stage, a Mutt-and-Jeff combo whose wildly improvisational comedy quickly made them a star attraction along the Boardwalk. Within months, Martin and Lewis' salaries rocketed from 350 to 5,000 dollars a week, and by the end of the 1940s, they were the most popular comedy duo in the nation. In 1949, they made their film debut in George Marshall's My Friend Irma, and their supporting work proved so popular with audiences that their roles were significantly expanded for the sequel, the following year's My Friend Irma Goes West. With 1951's At War With the Army, Martin and Lewis earned their first star billing. The picture established the basic formula of all of their subsequent movie work, with Martin the suave straight man forced to suffer the bizarre antics of the manic fool Lewis. Critics often loathed the duo, but audiences couldn't get enough. In all, they made 13 comedies for Paramount, among them 1952's Jumping Jacks, 1953's Scared Stiff, and 1955's Artists and Models, a superior effort directed by Frank Tashlin. For 1956's Hollywood or Bust, Tashlin was again in the director's seat, but the movie was the team's last; after Martin and Lewis' relationship soured to the point where they were no longer even speaking to one another, they announced their breakup following the conclusion of their July 25, 1956, performance at the Copacabana, which celebrated to the day the tenth anniversary of their first show.Working again as a solo performer, Lewis also served as producer on his first post-Martin star vehicle, 1957's The Delicate Delinquent. Reviews were good, and later that same year he starred in The Sad Sack. With 1958's Rock-a-Bye Baby, he teamed again with Tashlin, the first of six Lewis comedies the director helmed; they next united for The Geisha Boy. Under Norman Taurog, Lewis returned in 1959 with Don't Give up the Ship. At the time of its release, he signed an exclusive contract with Paramount for ten million dollars and 60 percent of his box-office profits, the biggest payday of its kind in Hollywood history; at its peak, his popularity was so great that he even starred in a DC Comics book. Lewis celebrated his success by making another feature for Taurog, 1960's Visit to a Small Planet, before returning to work under Tashlin for Cinderfella.With 1960's The Bellboy, Lewis made his directorial debut. Here his comic vision began to truly take flight, with only a bare-bones plot and virtually no dialogue to best serve his ambitious gags. He also directed and produced 1961's The Ladies' Man, a lavishly filmed, vicious satire on American femininity, followed by The Errand Boy, another collection of sight gags which earned favorable comparison to the work of Jacques Tati. Under Tashlin, Lewis next starred in 1962's It's Only Money. Returning to the director's chair, he filmed his masterpiece, The Nutty Professor, a comic retelling of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tale which, while dismissed by American critics, solidified his following among European filmgoers, especially the staff of the influential Cahiers du Cinema.In between 1963's Who's Minding the Store? and 1964's The Disorderly Orderly, both written and directed by Tashlin, Lewis also helmed The Patsy, his most ambitious work to date. In 1965's The Family Jewels, he not only wrote and directed, but also played seven different roles. The picture was among his first not to become a major box-office success. He subsequently traveled to France to star in John Rich's Boeing Boeing. There "Le Roi du Crazy" (as he was dubbed) was met by adoring fans and critics with a three-week film festival, as well as a complete retrospective at the Cinematheque Francais. However, the feature was Lewis' last for Paramount, who found his insistence upon complete artistic control to be at odds with the increasingly disappointing box-office showings of his films.In 1966, after landing at Columbia to direct and star in Three on a Couch, Lewis hosted his first Labor Day telethon to raise funds in support of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The star-studded event quickly became an institution, annually bringing in millions upon millions in charitable contributions. Lewis next starred in the Gordon Douglas space comedy Way, Way Out, followed by 1967's The Big Mouth, which he directed and co-wrote. He next appeared in Jerry Paris' Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River and George Marshall's Hook, Line and Sinker, subsequently directing (but, for the first and only time, not starring) in 1969's One More Time. None of the movies found favor with audiences or critics, however, and after the failure of 1970's Which Way to the Front?, Lewis' career in Hollywood was in grave condition. While seeking funding for his next project, in 1971 he wrote a book, The Total Filmmaker. With financing from the Swedish-based Cinema and Film Enterprises, in 1972 Lewis mounted The Day the Clown Cried, a disturbing tale focusing on a famous clown forced by the Nazis to lead children to their deaths in the gas chambers. Widely speculated to be either a transcendent masterpiece or an obscene failure, the radical feature was never released, remaining trapped in legal limbo. Lewis spent the remainder of the decade out of film, appearing instead in the disastrous Broadway production Helzapoppin' as well as in concert and on the lecture circuit. Finally, in 1979 he wrote, directed, and starred in Hardly Working; though not released until two years later because of financial entanglements, the movie proved to be a major success, grossing over 50 million dollars in North America alone.In late 1982, Lewis was declared clinically dead after suffering a massive heart attack. He was miraculously revived, and the excessive lifestyle that led to his near-death experience became the subject of his 1983 feature Smorgasbord, which later premiered on HBO as Cracking Up before finally bowing in theaters in 1985. In the meantime, Lewis garnered some of the best reviews of his career for his work in Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy, but his performance did not lead to work in other major Hollywood productions. As a result, he traveled to France, appearing in the 1984 comedies To Catch a Cop and Par Ou T'es Rentre? on T'a Pas Vue Sortir. The dismal Slapstick of Another Kind also arrived in 1984, with only small roles in the 1987 telefilm Fight for Life and Susan Seidelman's 1989 effort Cookie, as well as an extended supporting turn in the television series Wiseguy. By the 1990s, Lewis experienced something of a resurgence. Although he remained unable to secure directorial work, he did appear in the major studio films Mr. Saturday Night and Funny Bones. Additionally, he starred on Broadway in a successful revival of Damn Yankees and in 1996, The Nutty Professor was remade by Eddie Murphy.

Trivia: A dancer, singer, highly regarded actress and metaphysical time traveler, Shirley MacLaine is certainly among Hollywood's most unique stars. Born Shirley MacLane Beaty on April 24, 1934 in Richmond, Virginia, MacLaine was the daughter of drama coach and former actress Kathlyn MacLean Beaty and Ira O. Beaty, a professor of psychology and philosophy. Her younger brother, Warren Beatty, also grew up to be an important Hollywood figure as an actor/director/ producer and screenwriter. MacLaine's mother, who gave up her own dreams of stardom for her young family, greatly motivated her daughter to become an actress and dancer. MacLaine took dance lessons from age two, first performed publicly at age four, and at 16 went to New York, making her Broadway debut as a chorus girl in Me and Juliet (1953). When not scrambling for theatrical work, MacLaine worked as a model. Interestingly, MacLaine's big break was the result of another actress's bad luck. In 1954, MacLaine was understudying Broadway actress Carol Haney The Pajama Game when Haney fractured her ankle. MacLaine replaced her and was spotted and offered a movie contract by producer Hal Wallis. With her auburn hair cut impishly short, the young actress made her film debut in Hitchock's black comedy The Trouble With Harry (1955). Later that year, she co-starred opposite Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in the comedy Artists and Models. In her next feature, Around the World in 80 Days (1956), she appeared as an Indian princess. MacLaine earned her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a pathetic tart who shocks a conservative town by showing up on the arm of young war hero Frank Sinatra in Some Came Running (1959). She then got the opportunity to show off her long legs and dancing talents in Can-Can (1960). Prior to that, she appeared with Rat Packers Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford in Oceans Eleven (1960). MacLaine, the only female member of the famed group, would later recount her experiences with them in her seventh book My Lucky Stars. In 1960, she won her second Oscar nomination for Billy Wilder's comedy/drama The Apartment, and a third nomination for Irma La Douce (1963). MacLaine's career was in high gear during the '60s, with her appearing in everything from dramas to madcap comedies to musicals such as What a Way to Go! (1964) and Bob Fosse's Sweet Charity! (1969). In addition to her screen work, she actively participated in Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign and served as a Democratic Convention delegate. She was similarly involved in George McGovern's 1972 campaign. Bored by sitting around on movie sets all day awaiting her scenes, MacLaine started writing down her thoughts and was thus inspired to add writing to her list of talents. She published her first book, Don't Fall Off the Mountain in 1970. She next tried her hand at series television in 1971, starring in the comedy Shirley's World (1971-72) as a globe-trotting photographer. The role reflected her real-life reputation as a world traveler, and these experiences resulted in her second book Don't Fall Off the Mountain and the documentary The Other Half of the Sky -- A China Memoir (1975) which she scripted, produced and co-directed with Claudia Weill. MacLaine returned to Broadway in 1976 with a spectacular one-woman show A Gypsy in My Soul, and the following year entered a new phase in her career playing a middle-aged former ballerina who regrets leaving dance to live a middle-class life in The Turning Point. MacLaine was memorable starring as a lonely political wife opposite Peter Sellers' simple-minded gardener in Being There (1979), but did not again attract too much attention until she played the over-protective, eccentric widow Aurora Greenway in James L. Brooks' Terms of Endearment (1983), a role that finally won MacLaine an Academy Award. That same year, she published the candid Out on a Limb, bravely risking public ridicule by describing her experiences and theories concerning out-of-body travel and reincarnation. MacLaine's film appearances were sporadic through the mid '80s, although she did appear in a few television specials. In 1988, she came back strong with three great roles in Madame Sousatzka (1988), Steel Magnolias (1989) and particularly Postcards from the Edge (1990), in which she played a fading star clinging to her own career while helping her daughter Meryl Streep, a drug addicted, self-destructive actress. Through the '90s, MacLaine specialized in playing rather crusty and strong-willed eccentrics, such as her title character in the 1994 comedy Guarding Tess. In 1997, MacLaine stole scenes as a wise grande dame who helps pregnant, homeless Ricki Lake in Mrs. Winterbourne, and the same year revived Aurora Greenway in The Evening Star, the critically maligned sequel to Terms of Endearment.MacLaine's onscreen performances were few and far between in the first half of the next decade, but in 2005 she returned in relatively full force, appearing in three features. She took on a pair of grandmother roles in the comedy-dramas In Her Shoes and Rumor Has It..., and was a perfect fit for the part of Endora in the bigscreen take on the classic sitcom Bewitched. In the coming years, McLaine would continue to give critically acclaimed performances in movies like Coco Chanel, Valentine's Day, and Bernie.For a long time, MacLaine did seminars on her books, but in the mid '90s stopped giving talks, claiming she did not want "to be anyone's guru." She does, however, continue writing and remains a popular writer.

Trivia: Malone was born Dorothy Maloney, under which name she appeared in her earliest films. She began modeling in childhood and also frequently acted in school plays. While performing in a college play at age 18 she was spotted by a talent agent and soon signed to a film contract by RKO. After playing bits in several films she switched studios in 1945 and gradually got better roles; usually she played standard pretty-girl leads. In the mid '50s she began to gain attention as a serious actress. For her portrayal of a frustrated nymphomaniac in Written on the Wind (1956) she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar; however, few of her later roles were rewarding, and she made few films after 1964. She costarred in the TV series Peyton Place. She continued appearing in occasional films through the '80s. From 1959-64 she was married to actor Jacques Bergerac.

Trivia: Comical American actor Eddie Mayehoff played character roles in feature films of the '50s and '60s. Prior to that, the Baltimore native worked as a band leader and then began working on early television as an emcee and actor (notably on the 1951 feature-turned-TV series That's My Boy).

Trivia: Best known as the Gabor sister with talent, actress Eva Gabor began her career as a cabaret singer and ice skater in her native Hungary. Forced to emigrate to the U.S. at the outbreak of World War II, Gabor was able to secure film work in mystery-woman parts in such films as Forced Landing and Pacific Blackout (both 1941). The actress didn't truly achieve star stature until her Broadway appearance in The Happy Time (1950), though, curiously, she wasn't called upon to appear in the 1952 film version. Gabor's movie career, in fact, remained rooted in supporting roles, such as one of Vincent Price's victims in The Mad Magician (1954) and as Liane d'Exelmans in the Oscar-winning Gigi (1958). Like her sister Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eva has accrued plenty of press coverage thanks to her multiple marriages, but, unlike Zsa Zsa, Gabor has managed to stay off the police blotter -- except for a 1964 incident in which she was nearly killed fighting off a couple of vicious diamond robbers. Gabor's best-loved public appearances were manifested in her five-year run as Lisa Douglas on the popular TV sitcom Green Acres (1965-1970). Contrary to the Gabor Sisters' image of contentiousness, Eva was well liked on the Green Acres set by both co-star Eddie Albert and director Richard Bare, who had nothing but praise for her professionalism and comic timing. Gabor proved she hadn't lost her touch in 1990 when the inevitable Green Acres two-hour revival movie made its way to television. She died in 1995.

Trivia: Junoesque Swedish leading lady Anita Ekberg got her start in the U.S., where she was elected "Miss Sweden" in the Miss Universe pageant. Along with other Miss Universe contestants, Ekberg played an Amazonian extraterrestrial in 1953's Abbott and Costello Go to Mars. She also displayed her obvious attributes in such Technicolor shows as Artists and Models (1956) and Hollywood or Bust (1957), and proved an apt foil for the leering one-liners of Bob "Cherchez la Femme" Hope in Paris Holiday (1957) and Call Me Bwana (1963). Though never taken completely seriously as an actress, Ekberg was given better opportunities to emote in the Italian films of Federico Fellini, notably as the principal "wish dream" in La Dolce Vita (1961). Anita Ekberg would repeat her La Dolce Vita role in Fellini's 1986 filmic autobiography Intervista. Ekberg retired from acting in 2002; she died in 2015 at age 83.

Trivia: A graduate of Santa Monica Junior College, Jack Elam spent the immediate post-World War II years as an accountant, numbering several important Hollywood stars among his clients. Already blind in one eye from a childhood fight, Elam was in danger of losing the sight in his other eye as a result of his demanding profession. Several of his show business friends suggested that Elam give acting a try; Elam would be a natural as a villain. A natural he was, and throughout the 1950s Elam cemented his reputation as one of the meanest-looking and most reliable "heavies" in the movies. Few of his screen roles gave him the opportunity to display his natural wit and sense of comic timing, but inklings of these skills were evident in his first regular TV series assignments: The Dakotas and Temple Houston, both 1963. In 1967, Elam was given his first all-out comedy role in Support Your Local Sheriff, after which he found his villainous assignments dwindling and his comic jobs increasing. Elam starred as the patriarch of an itinerant Southwestern family in the 1974 TV series The Texas Wheelers (his sons were played by Gary Busey and Mark Hamill), and in 1979 he played a benign Frankenstein-monster type in the weekly horror spoof Struck By Lightning. Later TV series in the Elam manifest included Detective in the House (1985) and Easy Street (1987). Of course Elam would also crack up audiences in the 1980s with his roles in Cannonball Run and Cannonball Run II. Though well established as a comic actor, Elam would never completely abandon the western genre that had sustained him in the 1950s and 1960s; in 1993, a proud Elam was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame. Two short years later the longitme star would essay his final screen role in the made for television western Bonanza: Under Attack.

Trivia: Herbert Rudley had barely left his teens when he won a scholarship to Eva Le Galleine's Repertory Theater in the early '30s. The experienced gleaned with this organization led to Rudley's being cast in his first Broadway play, Elmer Rice's We, the People. In films since 1940's Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Rudley's best movie role was as Ira Gershwin in the 1945 biopic Rhapsody in Blue. He matured into character parts in the 1950s, usually playing suave villains or bristly military types. Herbert Rudley was a regular on several TV series, most prominently as Eve Arden's husband on the 1967 sitcom The Mothers-in-Law.

Trivia: Recruited from the stage, Richard Webb was signed to a standard Paramount contract in 1941. After playing bits in such films as Among the Living (1941) Sullivan's Travels (1942) and I Wanted Wings (1942), Webb served as a Captain in World War II. Upon his return, he was briefly groomed for stardom. He played such sizeable supporting roles as Jim in Out of the Past (1947), Private Shipley in Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and Sir Galahad in A Connecticut Yankee in King's Arthur's Court, but his only top-billed assignment was the 1950 Republic serial The Invisible Monster. In 1952, Webb landed the role of Captain Midnight in the TV series of the same name, earning the hero worship of kids everywhere--and the animosity of the Captain Midnight producers when he refused to drink the sponsor's product, Ovaltine, in public (he hated the stuff!) Webb went on to star in the 1959 syndicated TVer US Border Patrol, then did guest spots on such series as Gunsmoke, Lassie and Get Smart. In the '70s Webb turned to writing, publishing four books on psychic phenomena, including the 1974 reincarnation study These Came Back. Suffering from cancer and a respiratory ailment, Richard Webb committed suicide in 1993.

Trivia: The inimitable American actress Kathleen Freeman has been convulsing film audiences with portrayals of dowdy, sharp-tongued matrons since she was in her 20s. After stage work, Freeman began taking bit roles in major-studio features in 1948, seldom getting screen credit but always making a positive impression. The best of her earliest roles was in Singin' in the Rain (1952); Freeman played long-suffering vocal coach Phoebe Dinsmore, whose Herculean efforts to get dumb movie star Jean Hagen to grasp the proper enunciation of the phrase "I can't staaaand him" proved uproariously futile. Often cast as domestics, Freeman had a year's run in 1953 as the "spooked" maid on the ghostly TV sitcom Topper. Freeman was a particular favorite of comedian Jerry Lewis, who cast the actress in showy (and billed!) roles in such farces as The Errand Boy (1961), The Nutty Professor (1963) and Who's Got the Action?. As Nurse Higgins in Lewis' Disorderly Orderly (1964), Freeman weeps quietly as Jerry meekly scrapes oatmeal off her face and babbles "Oh, Nurse Higgins...you're all full of...stuff." Lewis so trusted Freeman's acting instincts that he sent her to the set of director William Wyler's The Collector (1965) in order to help build up the confidence of Wyler's nervous young leading lady Samantha Eggar. Throughout the '70s and '80s, Freeman took occasional "sabbaticals" from her movie and TV assignments to do stage work, enjoying a lengthy run in a Chicago production of Ira Levin's Deathtrap. Like many character actors of the '50s, Kathleen Freeman is frequently called upon to buoy the projects of baby-boomer directors: she was recently seen as an hysterical Julia Child clone in Joe Dante's Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990).

Trivia: Snowy-haired Art Baker played avuncular character roles on both stage and screen. Among his movie credits were Once Upon a Time (1944), Spellbound (1946), Daisy Kenyon (1947) and State of the Union (1948). Though never wanting for acting jobs, Baker is best remembered for his radio career (which began in 1936) and his subsequent TV work. Among his many other airwaves credits, Art Baker was the first emcee of the audience-participation program People are Funny and was the host of the long-running human-interest series You Asked for It.

Trivia: Trained at Iowa's Morningside College for a career as a musician, American actor Emory Parnell spent his earliest performing years as a concert violinist. He worked the Chautauqua and Lyceum tent circuits for a decade before leaving the road in 1930. For the next few seasons, Parnell acted and narrated in commercial and industrial films produced in Detroit. Determining that the oppurtunities and renumeration were better in Hollywood, Emory and his actress wife Effie boarded the Super Chief and headed for California. Endowed with a ruddy Irish countenance and perpetual air of frustration, Parnell immediately landed a string of character roles as cops, small town business owners, fathers-in-law and landlords (though his very first film part in Bing Crosby's Dr. Rhythm [1938] was cut out before release). In roles both large and small, Parnell became an inescapable presence in B-films of the '40s; one of his better showings was in the A-picture Louisiana Purchase, in which, as a Paramount movie executive, he sings an opening song about avoiding libel suits! Parnell was a regular in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle film series (1949-55), playing small town entrepreneur Billy Reed; on TV, the actor appeared as William Bendix' factory foreman The Life of Riley (1952-58). Emory Parnell's last public appearance was in 1974, when he, his wife Effie, and several other hale-and-hearty residents of the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital were interviewed by Tom Snyder.

Trivia: There was always something slightly sinister about American actor Carleton G. Young that prevented him from traditional leading man roles. Young always seemed to be hiding something, to be looking over his shoulder, or to be poised to head for the border; as such, he was perfectly cast in such roles as the youthful dope peddler in the 1936 camp classic Reefer Madness. Even when playing a relatively sympathetic role, Young appeared capable of going off the deep end at any minute, vide his performance in the 1937 serial Dick Tracy as Tracy's brainwashed younger brother. During the 1940s and 1950s, Young was quite active in radio, where he was allowed to play such heroic leading roles as Ellery Queen and the Count of Monte Cristo without his furtive facial expressions working against him. As he matured into a greying character actor, Young became a special favorite of director John Ford, appearing in several of Ford's films of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1962's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it is Young, in the small role of a reporter, who utters the unforgettable valediction "This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact...print the legend." Carleton G. Young was the father of actor Tony Young, who starred in the short-lived 1961 TV Western Gunslinger.

Trivia: Former radio actress Martha Wentworth played the Duchess, Allan Lane's robust-looking aunt, in seven of Republic Pictures' popular Red Ryder Westerns from 1946-1947. The original Duchess, Alice Fleming, had left the series along with William Elliott, who was being groomed for Grade-A Westerns. As the new Duchess, Wentworth joined Lane, Elliott's replacement, and little Bobby Blake (later Robert Blake), the former Our Gang star, who played Indian sidekick Little Beaver in all the Republic Red Ryder films. For a great majority of the series' fans, the Lane-Wentworth-Blake combination turned out the quintessential Red Ryder films, the trio becoming one of the most successful combinations in B-Western history. Republic sold the Red Ryder franchise to low-budget Eagle-Lion in 1948 and four additional films were produced, but Wentworth was replaced with former silent-action heroine Marin Sais. In her later years, Wentworth did quite a bit of voice-over work for Walt Disney.

Trivia: Nick Castle was one of the most famous choreographers in Hollywood from the mid-30s through the early 1960s. Beginning as a vaudeville dancer, he came to Hollywood in 1935 and began working for Fox. He later worked at Universal, MGM, and other studios and has worked with almost all of the big-name dance stars including Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Betty Grable, Shirley Temple and Judy Garland. Castle died in 1968. His son Nick Castle Jr, has gone on to become a competent director.

Trivia: George Winslow, born George Wentzlaff in Los Angeles, earned his nickname "Foghorn" for having an unusually loud, raucous, and deep voice. He was popular during the '50s and made his debut on Art Linkletter's People Are Funny television series. He made a few films during the '50s, but the novelty of his voice soon wore thin and by the time he was 12, Foghorn Winslow was a has-been.

Trivia: With his learned countenance and a correct Germanic manner that could be avuncular or threatening, Otto Waldis was one of the more familiar European character actors in Hollywood and on television in the years after World War II. Born Otto Brunn in Vienna, Austria, in 1901, he turned to acting in his twenties and made his screen debut in an uncredited role in Fritz Lang's M in 1931. He worked in one more movie that year -- Kinder Vor Gericht -- and then was unseen in films until after the war. Waldis' career resumed in 1947 in Hollywood under the aegis of his fellow European expatriate, director Max Ophüls, in the latter's The Exile. He was fully employed over the next decade, working constantly in television and movies, his performances covering a wide swath of entertainment. In 1948 alone, before he'd even made the jump to television, Waldis worked in popular, big studio productions like Henry Hathaway's Call Northside 777, Jacques Tourneur's Berlin Express, and independent films such as Ophüls' Letter From an Unknown Woman. He went on to play character roles in lighter fare, including the comedies I Was a Male War Bride and Love Happy (both 1949). With his wizened, bespectacled presence and correct Austrian bearing, Waldis was suited to roles ranging from valets to scientists; in The Whip Hand (1951), he played an unrepentant Nazi germ-warfare expert, while in Unknown World (1951) and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), he played more benign scientists. But in 5 Fingers (1952), he was a Pullman porter, and in the Adventures of Superman episode "The Whistling Bird," he was part of a criminal conspiracy. He would occasionally play much more offbeat parts, such as Patch-Eye in Prince Valiant (1954). He closed out the 1950s portraying a police officer in Edward Dmytryk's disastrous remake of The Blue Angel (1959). Waldis' activity slackened considerably in the '60s, a period in which he made his first appearances in German films since the '30s. He was back in Hollywood during the '70s and had just been signed to appear in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein at the time of his death from a heart attack in early 1974.

Trivia: Gertrude Astor did so much work in Hollywood in so many different acting capacities that it's not simple or easy to characterize her career. Born in Lakewood, OH, she joined a stock company at age 13, in the year 1900, and worked on showboats during that era. She played in vaudeville as well, and made her movie debut in 1914 as a contract player at Universal. She was an accomplished rider, which got her a lot of work as a stuntwoman, sometimes in conjunction with a young Maine-born actor named John Ford in pictures directed by the latter's brother, Francis Ford. But Astor soon moved into serious acting roles; a tall, statuesque, angular woman, she frequently towered over the leading men of the era, and was, thus, ideal as a foil in comedies of the 1910s and '20s, playing aristocrats, gold diggers, and the heroine's best friend (had the character of Brenda Starr existed that far back, she'd have been perfect playing Hank O'Hair, her crusty female editor). Astor was the vamp who plants stolen money on Harry Langdon in The Strong Man (1926), Laura La Plante's wisecracking traveling companion in The Cat and the Canary (1927), and the gold digger who got her hooks into Otis Harlan (as well as attracting the attention of fellow sailor Eddie Gribbon) in Dames Ahoy. When talkies came in, Astor's deep, throaty voice assured her steady work in character parts, still mostly in comedy. Her roles weren't huge, but she worked prolifically at Hal Roach studios with such headliners as Laurel and Hardy, in the Our Gang shorts, and especially with Charley Chase, and also worked at Columbia Pictures' short subjects unit. Astor's specialty at this time was outraged dignity; she was forever declaring, "I've never been so embarrassed in all my life!" and stalking out of a slapstick situation, usually with a comedy prop (a balloon, a folding chairs, a cream puff) affixed to her posterior. Astor worked regularly into the early '60s; she was briefly glimpsed as the first murder victim in the Sherlock Holmes adventure The Scarlet Claw (1944) and was among the ranks of dress extras in Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Her longtime friend John Ford also gave her roles in his feature films right into the early '60s, culminating with her appearance in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Gertrude Astor remained alert and quick-witted into her eighties, cheerfully sharing her memories of the glory days of comedy short subjects with fans and film historians. And in a town that can scarcely remember last year's studio presidents, in 1975, when she was 87 years old, Astor was given a party at Universal, where she was honored by a gathering of old friends, including the directors George Cukor, Allan Dwan, and Henry Hathaway. She passed away suddenly and peacefully on the day of her 90th birthday in 1977.