Trivia: Given that Fred MacMurray built a successful film career as the quintessential nice guy, it's rather ironic that some of his strongest and best-remembered performances cast him against type. While remaining known as a fixture of light comedies and live-action Disney productions, his definitive roles nonetheless were those which found him contemplating murder, adultery, and other villainous pursuits. Born August 30, 1908, in Kankakee, IL, MacMurray, the son of a concert violinist, was educated at a military academy and later studied at the Chicago Art Institute. His original goal was to become a professional saxophonist, and toward that aim he worked with a variety of bands and even recorded with Gus Arnheim. MacMurray's musical aspirations eventually led him to Hollywood, where he frequently worked as an extra. He later joined the California Collegians and with them played Broadway in the 1930 revue Three's a Crowd, where he joined Libby Holman on a duet of "Something to Remember Me By." He subsequently appeared in productions of The Third Little Show and Roberta. The story behind MacMurray's return to Hollywood remains uncertain -- either a Paramount casting scout saw him on-stage, or he simply signed up with Central Casting -- but either way, he was under contract by 1934. At Paramount, he rose to fame in 1935's The Gilded Lily, a romantic comedy which pit him against Claudette Colbert. Seemingly overnight he was among the hottest young actors in town, and he quickly emerged as a favorite romantic sparring partner with many of Hollywood's leading actresses. After Katherine Hepburn requested his services for Alice Adams, MacMurray joined Carole Lombard in Hands Across the Table before reuniting with Colbert in The Bride Comes Home, his seventh film in 12 months. He kept up the frenetic pace, appearing in 1936's The Trail of the Lonesome Pine alongside Henry Fonda, reteaming with Lombard in The Princess Comes Across. After settling a contract dispute with Paramount, MacMurray again starred with Colbert in the 1937 swashbuckler Maid of Salem, one of the first films to move him away from the laid-back, genial performances on which he'd risen to success.Along with Colbert, Lombard remained the actress with whom MacMurray was most frequently paired. They reunited in 1937's Swing High, Swing Low and again that same year in True Confession. After starring with Bing Crosby in Sing You Sinners, he also began another onscreen partnership with Madeleine Carroll in 1939's Cafe Society, quickly followed by a reunion in Invitation to Bali. While not the superstar that many predicted he would become, by the 1940s MacMurray had settled comfortably into his leading man duties, developing an amiable comic style perfectly suited to his pictures' sunny tone. While occasionally appearing in a more dramatic capacity, as in the Barbara Stanwyck drama Remember the Night, the majority of his pictures remained light, breezy affairs. However, in 1944 he and Stanwyck reunited in Billy Wilder's superb Double Indemnity, which cast MacMurray as a murderous insurance salesman. The result was perhaps the most acclaimed performance of his career, earning him new respect as a serious actor.However, MacMurray soon returned to more comedic fare, appearing with Colbert in 1944's Practically Yours. After the following year's farcical Murder He Says, his contract with Paramount ended and he moved to 20th Century Fox, where he starred in the historical musical Where Do We Go From Here? His co-star, June Haver, became his wife in 1954. MacMurray then produced and starred in Pardon My Past, but after announcing his displeasure with Fox he jumped to Universal to star in the 1947 hit The Egg and I. During the 1940s and early '50s, he settled into a string of easygoing comedies, few of them successful either financially or artistically. His star began to wane, a situation not helped by a number of poor career choices; in 1950, he even turned down Wilder's classic Sunset Boulevard. In 1954, however, MacMurray returned to form in The Caine Mutiny, where he appeared as a duplicitous naval officer. As before, cast against type he garnered some of the best notices of his career, but this time he continued the trend by starring as a dirty cop in The Pushover. Despite recent critical acclaim, MacMurray's box-office clout remained diminished, and throughout the mid-'50s he appeared primarily in low-budget action pictures, most of them Westerns. In 1959, however, he was tapped by Walt Disney to star in the live-action comedy The Shaggy Dog, which became one of the year's biggest hits. MacMurray appeared as a callous adulterer in Wilder's Oscar-winning 1960 smash The Apartment before moving to television to star in the family sitcom My Three Sons; a tremendous success, it ran until 1972. He then returned to the Disney stable to essay the title role in 1961's The Absent-Minded Professor and remained there for the following year's Bon Voyage and 1963's Son of Flubber. However, after two more Disney features -- 1966's Follow Me Boys and 1967's The Happiest Millionaire -- both flopped, MacMurray remained absent from the big screen for the rest of the decade, and only resurfaced in 1973 in Disney's Charley and the Angel. After a pair of TV movies, MacMurray made one last feature, 1978's The Swarm, before retiring. He died in Santa Monica, CA, on November 5, 1991.

Trivia: Actor Tim Considine is the son of British-born film producer John W. Considine and theater-chain heiress Carmen Pantages. Tim's brother John was likewise an actor, and his uncle was newspaper columnist Bob Considine. He launched his film career at age 12, playing Red Skelton's son in The Clown (1953). Briefly signed with Disney in the mid-'50s, he co-starred in the "Spin and Marty" and "Hardy Boys" components of The Mickey Mouse Club. The young actor had a particularly good year in 1960, playing James Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello and launching a five-year run as Mike Douglas on the TV sitcom My Three Sons, co-starring fellow Disney alumni Fred MacMurray (with whom Tim had appeared in 1959's The Shaggy Dog) and Don Grady. Five years after leaving My Three Sons, Tim played his most famous -- and briefest -- screen role: the bedridden soldier slapped by George C. Scott in Patton (1970). At last report, Tim Considine was a high-priced Beverly Hills photographer.

Trivia: Famed for his ratchety voice and cold-fish stare, William Demarest was an "old pro" even when he was a young pro. He began his stage career at age 13, holding down a variety of colorful jobs (including professional boxer) during the off-season. After years in carnivals and as a vaudeville headliner, Demarest starred in such Broadway long-runners as Earl Carroll's Sketch Book. He was signed with Warner Bros. pictures in 1926, where he was briefly paired with Clyde Cook as a "Mutt and Jeff"-style comedy team. Demarest's late-silent and early-talkie roles varied in size, becoming more consistently substantial in the late 1930s. His specialty during this period was a bone-crushing pratfall, a physical feat he was able to perform into his 60s. While at Paramount in the 1940s, Demarest was a special favorite of writer/director Preston Sturges, who cast Demarest in virtually all his films: The Great McGinty (1940); Christmas in July (1940); The Lady Eve (1941); Sullivan's Travels (1942); The Palm Beach Story (1942); Hail the Conquering Hero (1944); Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), wherein Demarest was at his bombastic best as Officer Kockenlocker; and The Great Moment (1944). For his role as Al Jolson's fictional mentor Steve Martin in The Jolson Story (1946), Demarest was Oscar-nominated (the actor had, incidentally, appeared with Jolie in 1927's The Jazz Singer). Demarest continued appearing in films until 1975, whenever his increasingly heavy TV schedule would allow. Many Demarest fans assumed that his role as Uncle Charlie in My Three Sons (66-72) was his first regular TV work: in truth, Demarest had previously starred in the short-lived 1960 sitcom Love and Marriage.

Trivia: The daughter of Sheila and Gordon MacRae, actress/singer Meredith MacRae was virtually born into a show business career, and with her voice and good looks it would have been difficult for her to have avoided such a choice, even if she'd wanted to. Her parents actually led a surprisingly unpretentious middle-class life-style, and she earned all of her breaks, whether they were roles in movies (Bikini Beach) or a chance at a recording career -- she cut a handful of records in the early/middle 1960s. But it was on the series My Three Sons in 1963 that she first became widely known on the small-screen, when she took the role of Sally Morrison. After two years in that part, she moved on to Petticoat Junction, where she took over the role of Billie Jo Bradley from Guinilla Hutton -- she kept the part for the five years remaining in the series' run, and the producers enabled MacRae to feature her singing ability in the part. Following the cancellation of the series, MacRae went on to do guest spots of series ranging from Fantasy Island to The Rackford Files, and she was also a frequence guest on game shows. She was also active in summer stock and regional theater productions of such shows as Bye Bye Birdie and Take Me Along, and raised money for various medical charities. MacRae died of complications from brain cancer in the summer of 2000.

Trivia: Made his TV debut in an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show titled "The Talented Neighborhood."Played Ernie Douglas on the 1960's sitcom My Three Sons.Performed on Broadway in the comedy play The Skin of Our Teeth in 1975.Released his autobiography, The Importance of Being Ernie, which is filled with anecdotes from throughout his career from My Three Sons to Mad Men and beyond, in 2011.

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.