Trivia: Clifton Webb was the most improbable of movie stars that one could imagine -- in an era in which leading men were supposed to be virile and bold, he was prissy and, well, downright fussy. Where the actors in starring roles were supposed to lead with their fists, or at least the suggestion of potential mayhem befalling those who got in the way of their characters, Webb used a sharp tongue and a waspish manner the way John Wayne wielded a six-gun and Clark Gable a smart mouth, a cocky grin, and great physique. And where male movie stars (except in the singing cowboy movies) were supposed to maintain a screen image that had women melting in their arms if not their presence, Webb hardly ever went near women in most of his screen roles, except in a fatherly or avuncular way. Nevertheles, the public devoured it all, even politely looking past Webb's well-publicized status as a "bachelor" who lived with his mother, and in the process turned him into one of Hollywood's most popular post-World War II movie stars, with a string of successful movies rivaling those of Wayne, Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, or any other leading man one cares to name. Indeed, Webb was for more than 15 years a mainstay of 20th Century Fox, his movies earning profits as reliably as the sun rising -- not bad for a man who was nearly rejected from his first film on the lot because the head of production couldn't abide his fey mannerisms. Clifton Webb was born Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck, in Indianapolis, IN, in 1891 (his date of birth was falsified during his lifetime and pushed up by several years, and some sources list the real year as 1889). His father -- about whom almost nothing is known, except that he was a businessman -- had no interest in preparing his offspring for the stage or the life of a performer, a fact that so appalled his mother (a frustrated actress) that she packed herself and the boy off to New York, and he started dancing lessons at age three. By the time he was seven years old, he was good enough to attract the attention of Malcolm Douglas, the director of the Children's Theatre, and he made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1900 (when he would have been either seven, nine, or 11), playing Cholly in The Brownies. Webb was taking lessons in all of the arts by then, and in 1911, made his operatic debut in La Bohème. It was as a dancer, though, that he first found his real fortune -- seen at a top New York nightspot, he so impressed one lady professional that she immediately proposed a partnership that resulted in an international career for Webb. Webb's acting wasn't neglected, either, and in the 1920s and '30s, he was regarded as one of the top stage talents in the country, a multiple-threat performer equally adept in musicals, comedies, or drama. Early in his career, he'd worked under a variety of names, finally transposing his first name to his last and reportedly taking the Clifton from the New Jersey town, because his mother liked the sound of it. Webb was a well-known figure on-stage, but his value as a film performer was considered marginal until he was well past 50 -- he'd done some film work during the silent era, but in the mid-'30s, he was brought out to Hollywood by MGM for a film project that ran into script problems. He spent a year out there collecting his contracted salary of 3,500 dollars a week and doing absolutely nothing, and hated every minute of it. Webb returned to New York determined never to experience such downtime again, and over the ensuing decade bounced back with hits in George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner and Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, doing the latter for three years. Ironically, the role of Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner was inspired by the real-life author/columnist Alexander Woollcott, who would also be the inspiration for the role that finally brought Webb to Hollywood successfully. In 1943, 20th Century Fox set out to adapt a novel by Vera Caspary entitled Laura to the screen. The book, a murder mystery set in New York, had in it a character named Waldo Lydecker, who was modeled on Alexander Woollcott; a waspish, stylish, and witty author and raconteur, Woollcott was a well-known and popular media figure, who'd even done a little acting onscreen and on-stage. When it came time to cast the role, producer Otto Preminger and director Rouben Mamoulian decided to give Webb a screen test. Preminger was totally convinced of Webb's rightness for the role, and the screen test bore him out, but studio production chief Darryl F. Zanuck couldn't abide Webb's fey, effete mannerisms and obviously gay persona, and did his best to keep him from the role. Luckily, Preminger prevailed, and Webb -- in what is usually regarded as his real film debut -- proved to be one of the most popular elements of what turned out to be a massively popular movie. It was the beginning of a very profitable two-decade relationship between the actor and the studio. Webb gave an Academy Award-caliber performance in Edmund Goulding's The Razor's Edge (1946), and in 1948 he became an out-and-out star, portraying Mr. Belvedere, the housekeeper and "nanny" hired by the harried parents (portrayed by Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara) in the hit comedy Sitting Pretty (1948). Beginning with Laura in 1944, each of the next 15 movies that Webb made was a success, and they included everything from comedies to some of the most intense film noir -- most notably The Dark Corner (1946), in which he played a murderer -- but the role of Mr. Belvedere proved to be so popular that it threatened to swallow him up. Webb flatly refused to do any sequel that did not meet with his approval, and only two ever did -- this even as he received thousands of letters from mothers seeking advice on raising their children. The great unspoken irony in all of this was that Webb was not only unmarried and childless, but was as close to being openly gay as any leading actor in Hollywood could be -- he lived with his mother, and the two attended parties together, and was on record as being a "bachelor," which was code in those days (where certain kinds of actors were concerned) for being gay. And in an era in which this wasn't acceptable as a choice or a condition, audiences didn't care -- in a testimony to the sheer power of his acting, they devoured Webb's work in whatever role he took on. He never did a Western, but he did play a father of two children who unexpectedly rises to heroism in Titanic (1953), and he played the father of 12 children in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950); as he said when asked about the propriety of a childless, unmarried man playing a father of 12, "I didn't need to be a murderer to play Waldo Lydecker -- I'm not a father, but I am an actor." Webb was always stylishly dressed in public, and owned dozens of expensive suits -- he was, in many ways, the America's first pop-culture "metrosexual," and he made it work for two decades. The death of Webb's mother in 1960, reportedly at age 90, was an event from which the actor never fully recovered. Though he did a few more screen appearances, his health was obviously in decline, and he passed away in 1966.

Trivia: The son of a traveling British civil servant, Edmund Gwenn was ordered to leave his home at age 17 when he announced his intention to become an actor. Working throughout the British empire in a variety of theatrical troupes, Gwenn finally settled in London in 1902 when he was personally selected by playwright George Bernard Shaw for a role in Shaw's Man and Superman. Thanks to Shaw's sponsorship, Gwenn rapidly established himself as one of London's foremost character stars, his career interrupted only by military service during World War I. Gwenn's film career, officially launched in 1916, took a back seat to his theatrical work for most of his life; still, he was a favorite of both American and British audiences for his portrayals of blustery old men, both comic and villainous. At age 71, Gwenn was cast as Kris Kringle, a lovable old eccentric who imagined that he was Santa Claus, in the comedy classic Miracle on 34th Street (1947); his brilliant portrayal was honored with an Academy Award and transformed the veteran actor into an "overnight" movie star. Edmund Gwenn died shortly after making his final film, an oddball Mexican comedy titled The Rocket From Calabuch (1958); one of his surviving family members his cousin Cecil Kellaway, was a respected character actor in his own right.

Trivia: Fresh out of the University of Chicago, brunette actress Frances Dee began securing extra roles in Hollywood, and by 1930 was co-starring with Maurice Chevalier (at his personal request) in Playboy in Paris. No winsome lass she, Frances truly came to life in parts calling for headstrong, uninhibited behavior. She was at her all-time best in Blood Money (1933), playing a thrill-seeking socialite with a pronounced masochistic streak. Hollywood saw Frances differently, and persisted in casting her in sedate roles that anyone could have played; it was disheartening, for example, to watch her play straight woman to Clifton Webb in Mister Scoutmaster (1953). Offscreen, Frances Dee was, for nearly sixty years, the wife of film star Joel McCrea, and the mother of actor Jody McCrea. In 2004, Dee passed away due to complications from a stroke.

Trivia: Yes, that was her real name. Born in Massachussetts, Veda Ann Borg established herself as a model in New York in the early 1930s. Though she'd never had any previous acting experience, Veda was given a secret screen test by Paramount in 1936 and signed on the spot. After a few years of nondescript roles, Veda was nearly killed in a serious automobile accident in 1939. Her face completely reconstructed by plastic surgery, Veda emerged from the bandages with a harder, more distinctive countenance than before--one that proved ideal for the many brassy chorus girls, gun molls and "kept women" that she would portray over the next twenty years. Usually laboring away in B pictures, Veda began picking up some impressive "A" credits in the 1950s, notably as Vivian Blaine's showgirl pal in the mammoth musical Guys and Dolls (1955). Her last appearance was as an bedraggled Indian woman in the John Wayne-directed The Alamo (1960). For eleven years, Veda Ann Borg was the wife of director Andrew V. McLaglen.

Trivia: Child actor Lee Aaker began making unbilled bit appearances in films in 1951. His roles increased in size and importance after his impressive showing as the contentious title character in the "Ransom of Red Chief" episode in O. Henry's Full House (1952). One of his better-known screen appearances was as yet another kidnap victim, the son of scientist Gene Barry, in The Atomic City (1952). To anyone born between 1945 and 1960, he will always be remembered as honorary cavalry corporal Rusty on TV's Rin Tin Tin, which ran from 1954 to 1958. After Rin Tin Tin ran its course, Aaker moved into the production end of the business, serving as an assistant to producer Herbert B. Leonard (who'd also been his Rin Tin Tin mentor) on the '60s series Route 66. Like many former child stars, Lee Aaker has occasionally been plagued by impostors claiming to be him; one enterprising phony successful posed as Aaker at several nostalgia conventions of the 1980s before one of the actor's sharper-eyed fans blew the whistle.

Trivia: Character actress Sarah Selby came to films by way of radio. In fact, her first screen assignment was a voice-over as one of the gossiping elephants in Disney's animated feature Dumbo (1941). She continued to play minor roles as nurses, housekeepers, and town gossips until her retirement in 1977; one of her last roles was Aunt Polly in a 1975 TV-movie adaptation of Huckleberry Finn. On television, Sarah Selby was seen on a semi-regular basis as storekeeper Ma Smalley on Gunsmoke (1955-1975).

Trivia: The older sister of actress Lillian Randolph, Amanda Randolph worked her way up the black vaudeville circuit as a singer and comedienne. She made her first screen appearance in the Vitaphone two-reeler The Black Network (1935) as the supposedly untalented wife of a radio sponsor; ironically, she sounded better than the film's official leading lady Nina Mae McKinney. After appearing in a handful of all-black feature films she established herself as a character actress on network radio. In the 1950s she was generally cast as maidservants in films, with the notable exception of her performance as Sidney Poitier's mother in 1950's No Way Out. On television, Amanda Randolph was seen to excellent advantage as the Kingfish's domineering mother-in-law on The Amos 'N' Andy Show (1951-1953) and as Louise the maid on Make Room for Daddy (1954-1964).

Trivia: Child actor Teddy Infuhr made his first screen appearance as one of Charles Laughton's kids in 1942's The Tuttles of Tahiti. Long associated with Universal Pictures, Infuhr garnered a great deal of critical attention for his brief appearance as a mute, semi-autistic pygmy in Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman (1944). Later on, he showed up as one of the anonymous children of Ma and Pa Kettle (Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride) in Universal's The Egg and I; when the Kettles were spun off into their own long-running movie series, Infuhr remained with the backwoods brood, usually cast as either George or Benjamin Kettle. One of his many free-lance assignments was Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), in which the poor boy suffered one of the most horrible deaths ever inflicted upon a movie juvenile. Teddy Infuhr's film career came to a quiet close in the early 1950s. He died in June 2007 at age 70.

Trivia: A veteran of vaudeville and Broadway, Harry Seymour came to films with extensive credits as a composer and musical-comedy star. Unfortunately, Seymour made his movie debut in 1925, at the height of the silent era. When talkies came in, he was frequently employed as a dialogue director with the Warner Bros. B-unit. From 1932 to 1958, Harry Seymour also essayed bit roles at Warners and 20th Century Fox, most often playing pianists (Irish Eyes Are Smiling, Rhapsody in Blue, A Ticket to Tomahawk, etc.).

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from 1937.

Trivia: Bob Sweeney got his start in the entertainment industry as a radio announcer and as part of a radio comedy team. Later Sweeney began playing supporting roles on early television comedies. He played the part of Fibber McGee on the NBC television sitcom Fibber McGee and Molly opposite Gale Gordon. The show didn't last long and afterward Sweeney became a television director. He did occasionally return to acting and appeared in a few feature films, notably The Last Hurrah (1958), where he played the undertaker, and Marnie (1964), in which he played Cousin Bob. As a director, he helmed most of the episodes of The Andy Griffith Show during its first three years. Later in the decade, Sweeney began producing television shows such as Hawaii Five-0 as well as continued as a director until the mid-'80s.

Trivia: One of the most prolific of the "Who IS that?"school of character actors, Dabbs Greer has been playing small-town doctors, bankers, merchants, druggists, mayors and ministers since at least 1950. His purse-lipped countenance and Midwestern twang was equally effective in taciturn villainous roles. Essentially a bit player in films of the 1950s (Diplomatic Courier, Deadline USA, Living It Up), Greer was given more screen time than usual as a New York detective in House of Wax (1953), while his surface normality served as excellent contrast to the extraterrestrial goings-on in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and It! The Terror from Beyond Space. A television actor since the dawn of the cathode-tube era, Greer has shown up in hundreds of TV supporting roles, including the "origin" episode of the original Superman series, in which he played the dangling dirigible worker rescued in mid-air by the Man of Steel. Greer also played the recurring roles of storekeeper Mr. Jones on Gunsmoke (1955-60) and Reverend Robert Alden on Little House on the Prairie (1974-83). Showing no signs of slowing down, Dabbs Greer continued accepting roles in such films as Two Moon Junction (1988) and Pacific Heights (1990) into the '90s. He died following a battle with kidney and heart disease, on April 28, 2007, not quite a month after his 90th birthday.

Trivia: American actor Tom Greenway appeared in numerous films between the late '40s and early '60s. He got his start on Broadway where he appeared in a number of productions before serving in the U.S. Air Force during WW II. While flying a mission he was shot down, and he spent over a year in Italian and German POW camps. Following his release, Greenway launched his film career.

Trivia: Sardonic, short-statured actor Ned Glass was born in Poland and spent his adolescence in New York. He came from vaudeville and Broadway to films in 1938, playing bits and minor roles in features and short subjects until he was barred from working in the early 1950s, yet another victim of the insidious Hollywood blacklist. Glass was able to pay the bills thanks to the support of several powerful friends. Producer John Houseman cast Glass in uncredited but prominent roles in the MGM "A" pictures Julius Caesar (1953) and The Bad and the Beautiful (1954); Glass' next-door neighbor, Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, arranged for Glass to play small parts in such Stooge comedies as Hokus Pokus (1949) and Three Hams on Rye (1954); and TV superstar Jackie Gleason frequently employed Glass for his "Honeymooners" sketches. His reputation restored by the early 1960s, Glass appeared as Doc in West Side Story (1961) and as one of the main villains in Charade (1963), among many other screen assignments; he also worked regularly on episodic TV. In 1972, Ned Glass was nominated for an Emmy award for his portrayal of Uncle Moe on the popular sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie.

Trivia: Kay Stewart is best remembered for playing Mary Aldrich, the pragmatic, wise elder sister in the Henry Aldrich film series of the early 1940s. Later in her career, Stewart appeared on television and in commercials. She was typically cast as a wife or a mother.

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.