Trivia: The son of professional ballplayer Walter Hart, William Sterling Hart attended the University of Pittsburgh, then worked as a clothing salesman before entering show business. He was signed by Columbia in 1939, where his name was changed to Robert Sterling so as to avoid confusion with silent western star William S. Hart. At Columbia, Sterling played bits in such features as Golden Boy and Blondie Brings Up Baby, and was also seen in the studio's short subjects product, notably as star of a 2-reel dramatization of the life of rubber magnate Charles Goodyear. In 1941, Sterling moved to MGM, where he was groomed as a potential Robert Taylor replacement. During his MGM tenure, he married actress Ann Sothern, with whom he appeared in Ringside Maisie. The union, which lasted until 1949, produced a daughter, future actress Tisha Sterling. Following war service, Sterling's career fell into a rut of colorless second leads. He finally achieved stardom on the delightful TV sitcom fantasy Topper, co-starring with his second wife Anne Jeffreys. After Topper completed its two-year run in 1955, the Sterlings took to the road in touring stage productions; they reteamed before the cameras in Love That Jill, a 1958 TV comedy which perished after 13 weeks. Sterling's additional TV work included the hosting chores on the 1956-57 season of The 20th Century-Fox Hour, and the starring role of small-town editor Robert Major on the 1961 sitcom Ichabod and Me. He was also one of several actors seriously considered for the role of Perry Mason before Raymond Burr won the part. Robert Sterling retired from acting in the 1970s to run a successful computer business; he has kept so low a public profile in the last two decades that many sources have referred to the still-active Anne Jeffreys as Sterling's widow!

Trivia: Possessor of one of the meanest faces in the movies, American actor Ray Teal spent much of his film career heading lynch mobs, recruiting for hate organizations and decimating Indians. Naturally, anyone this nasty in films would have to conversely be a pleasant, affable fellow in real life, and so it was with Teal. Working his way through college as a saxophone player, Teal became a bandleader upon graduation, remaining in the musical world until 1936. In 1938, Teal was hired to act in the low-budget Western Jamboree, and though he played a variety of bit parts as cops, taxi drivers and mashers, he seemed more at home in Westerns. Teal found it hard to shake his bigoted badman image even in A-pictures; as one of the American jurists in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), he is the only member of Spencer Tracy's staff that feels that sympathy should be afforded Nazi war criminals -- and the only one on the staff who openly dislikes American liberals. A more benign role came Teal's way on the '60s TV series Bonanza, where he played the sometimes ineffectual but basically decent Sheriff Coffee. Ray Teal retired from films shortly after going through his standard redneck paces in The Liberation of LB Jones (1970).

Trivia: American actress Pat Crowley was the daughter of a coal mine foreman. Pat' s older sister Ann took the plunge into acting first, and it was during Ann's appearance in a Chicago musical production that ten-year-old Pat was given a walk-on. Ann introduced her sister to a stock company producer, and from then on Pat was one of the busiest ingenues in New England, finally making her Broadway bow in Southern Exposure; Crowley was still only 16. Two years later, following a run on the live TV series A Date With Judy, Crowley was hired for a major role in Forever Female (1953), in which she and Ginger Rogers vied for the affections of William Holden. After becoming the center of much publicity at that time, Crowley then experienced a long spell of unemployment. When jobs became plentiful again, Crowley worked on both the stage and on TV, usually in one-shot guest roles; she had the distinction of being Robert Vaughn's first "leading lady" on the premiere episode of Man From U.N.C.L.E. in 1964. One year later, Crowley was cast as an unorthodox housewife on the NBC sitcom Please Don't Eat the Daisies. After two years of Daisies, Crowley's work load subsided; she did more supporting work until 1974, when she received a sizeable role on the Lloyd Bridges cop show Joe Forrester. Since that time, Patricia Crowley has confined her activities to TV character roles, notably a season's worth of appearances as Emily Falmont on the '80s nighttime serial Dynasty.

Trivia: Originally a newspaper reporter, Burgess Meredith came to the screen in 1936, repeating his stage role in Winterset, a part written for him by Maxwell Anderson. Meredith has had a long and varied film career, playing everything from George in Of Mice and Men (1939) to Sylvester Stallone's trainer in Rocky (1976). He received Oscar nominations for The Day of the Locust (1975) and Rocky. As comfortable with comedy as with drama, Meredith also appeared in Idiot's Delight (1939); Second Chorus (1940), with Fred Astaire; Diary of a Chambermaid (1942), which he also wrote and produced; The Story of G.I. Joe (1945); and Mine Own Executioner (1947). He also directed Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949). On television, he made countless guest appearances in dozens of dramatic and variety productions, including one of the first episodes of The Twilight Zone, the touching Time Enough at Last, and as host on the first episode of Your Show of Shows. He was a regular on Mr. Novak (1963-64) and Search (1972-73), hosted Those Amazing Animals (1981), co-starred with Sally Struthers in Gloria (1982-83), and made classic appearances as the Penguin on Batman (1966-68). He won an Emmy in 1977 for Tailgunner Joe and has done voiceover work for innumerable commercials, notably Volkswagen. Meredith made his final feature film appearance playing crusty Grandpa Gustafson in Grumpier Old Men (1995), the sequel to Grumpy Old Men (1993) in which he also appeared. In 1996, he played a role in the CD-rom video game Ripper. He was briefly married to Paulette Goddard in the 1940s. Meredith died in his Malibu home at the age of 88 on September 9, 1997.