Trivia: Left fatherless at the age of four, American actress Lucille Ball developed a strong work ethic in childhood; among her more unusual jobs was as a "seeing eye kid" for a blind soap peddler. Ball's mother sent the girl to the Chautauqua Institution for piano lessons, but she was determined to pursue an acting career after watching the positive audience reaction given to vaudeville monologist Julius Tannen. Young Ball performed in amateur plays for the Elks club and at her high school, at one point starring, staging, and publicizing a production of Charley's Aunt. In 1926, Ball enrolled in the John Murray Anderson American Academy of Dramatic Art in Manhattan (where Bette Davis was the star pupil), but was discouraged by her teachers to continue due to her shyness. Her reticence notwithstanding, Ball kept trying until she got chorus-girl work and modeling jobs; but even then she received little encouragement from her peers, and the combination of a serious auto accident and recurring stomach ailments seemed to bode ill for her theatrical future. Still, Ball was no quitter, and, in 1933, she managed to become one of the singing/dancing Goldwyn Girls for movie producer Samuel Goldwyn; her first picture was Eddie Cantor's Roman Scandals (1933). Working her way up from bit roles at both Columbia Pictures (where one of her assignments was in a Three Stooges short) and RKO Radio, Ball finally attained featured billing in 1935, and stardom in 1938 -- albeit mostly in B-movies. Throughout the late 1930s and '40s, Ball's movie career moved steadily, if not spectacularly; even when she got a good role like the nasty-tempered nightclub star in The Big Street (1942), it was usually because the "bigger" RKO contract actresses had turned it down. By the time she finished a contract at MGM (she was dubbed "Technicolor Tessie" at the studio because of her photogenic red hair and bright smile) and returned to Columbia in 1947, she was considered washed up. Ball's home life was none too secure, either. She'd married Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940, but, despite an obvious strong affection for one another, they had separated and considered divorce numerous times during the war years. Hoping to keep her household together, Ball sought out professional work in which she could work with her husband. Offered her own TV series in 1950, she refused unless Arnaz would co-star. Television was a godsend for the couple; and Arnaz discovered he had a natural executive ability, and was soon calling all the shots for what would become I Love Lucy. From 1951 through 1957, it was the most popular sitcom on television, and Ball, after years of career stops and starts, was firmly established as a megastar in her role of zany, disaster-prone Lucy Ricardo. When her much-publicized baby was born in January 1953, the story received more press coverage than President Eisenhower's inauguration. With their new Hollywood prestige, Ball and Arnaz were able to set up the powerful Desilu Studios production complex, ultimately purchasing the facilities of RKO, where both performers had once been contract players. But professional pressures and personal problems began eroding the marriage, and Ball and Arnaz divorced in 1960, although both continued to operate Desilu. Ball gave Broadway a try in the 1960 musical Wildcat, which was successful but no hit, and, in 1962, returned to TV to solo as Lucy Carmichael on The Lucy Show. She'd already bought out Arnaz's interest in Desilu, and, before selling the studio to Gulf and Western in 1969, Ball had become a powerful executive in her own right, determinedly guiding the destinies of such fondly remembered TV series as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. The Lucy Show ended in the spring of 1968, but Ball was back that fall with Here's Lucy, in which she played "odd job" specialist Lucy Carter and co-starred with her real-life children, Desi Jr. and Lucie. Here's Lucy lasted until 1974, at which time her career took some odd directions. She poured a lot of her own money in a film version of the Broadway musical Mame (1974), which can charitably be labeled an embarrassment. Her later attempts to resume TV production, and her benighted TV comeback in the 1986 sitcom Life With Lucy, were unsuccessful, although Ball, herself, continued to be lionized as the First Lady of Television, accumulating numerous awards and honorariums. Despite her many latter-day attempts to change her image -- in addition to her blunt, commandeering off-stage personality -- Ball would forever remain the wacky "Lucy" that Americans had loved intensely in the '50s. She died in 1989.

Trivia: Described by TV producer Hy Averback as "a combination of Laurence Olivier andCharley Chase," bombastic comic actor Gale Gordon was the son of vaudeville performers. His father was "quick-change" artist Charles T. Aldrich, and his mother was actress Gloria Gordon (best known for her portrayal of Mrs. O'Reilly on radio's My Friend Irma). Born with a cleft palate, Gordon underwent two excruciating oral operations as a child. By the time he was 17, Gordon's diction was so precise and his "new" voice so richly developed that he was invited to study acting under the aegis of famed actor/manager Richard Bennett. After several years on stage, Gordon moved to California in 1929, where he worked in Los Angeles radio as a free-lance actor and announcer. He appeared in heroic and villainous "straight" parts on such syndicated radio series as The Adventures of Fu Manchu and English Coronets, but soon found that his true forte was comedy. Gordon played the flustered Mayor La Trivia on Fibber McGee and Molly, several prominent roles on The Burns and Allen Show, and, best of all, pompous principal Osgood Conklin on Our Miss Brooks. In films since 1933 (he played a bit at the end of Joe E. Brown's Elmer the Great), Gordon proved a formidable comic foil in such films as Here We Go Again (1942, again with Fibber McGee and Molly), and Jerry Lewis' Don't Give Up the Ship (1959) and Visit to a Small Planet (1960). It is impossible to have grown up watching television without at least once revelling in the comedy expertise of Gale Gordon. In addition to starring in the 1956 sitcom The Brothers, Gordon was also seen in the video versions of My Favorite Husband, Our Miss Brooks, The Danny Thomas Show, Dennis the Menace--and virtually every one of Lucille Ball's TV projects, including her last, 1986's Life with Lucy.

Trivia: No one played supercilious, judgmental mothers-in-law with as much enthusiasm as Mabel Albertson. The sister of comic actor Jack Albertson, Albertson made a few tentative stabs at a film career in the 1920s and 1930s, but chose instead to concentrate on stage work. Returning to Hollywood in 1953, she became a semi-regular on several television series, and also contributed sharply honed character performances in films like Home Before Dark (1958) (as Jean Simmons' disastrously well-meaning stepmother) and The Gazebo (1959) (as a garrulous real estate agent). She hit her stride in the 1960s playing the self-pitying mother and mother-in-law of such TV actors as Tom Ewell, Dick Van Dyke, and Bewitched's Dick York and Dick Sargent. Though the roles may have been stereotyped, she always managed to make them hilariously -- and sometimes disturbingly -- real. Mabel Albertson died of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 81.

Trivia: An alumnus of the Indiana University Law School, Herbert Vigran gave up the legal world to become an actor. Making his 1935 film debut in Vagabond Lady, Vigran had a few lean months after his first flurry of Hollywood activity, but began getting stage work in New York on the basis of a portfolio of photos showing him sharing scenes with several well-known movie actors (never mentioning that most of his film roles were bit parts). After his first Broadway success in Having Wonderful Time, Vigran returned to L.A., accepting small parts in movies while keeping busy with plenty of lucrative radio work; among his hundreds of radio assignments was the title character on the wartime sitcom "The Sad Sack." In films, the harsh-voiced, heavily eyebrowed Vigran could usually be seen as brash reporters and Runyon-esque hoodlums; his favorite role was the rumpled private eye in the 1954 Dick Powell/Debbie Reynolds comedy Susan Slept Here. During the 1950s, Vigran was most active in TV, essaying half a dozen bad guy roles on the Superman series and appearing regularly as Monte the Bartender on the Dante's Inferno episodes of the anthology series Four Star Playhouse. In the early '70s, Herb Vigran found time during his hectic movie and voice-over schedule to play the recurring role of Judge Brooker on Gunsmoke.

Trivia: Character actor Karl Lukas was most famous for playing "Lindstrom" opposite Henry Fonda in the Broadway version of Mister Roberts(1948). While he spent most of his four-decade-long career on stage, he also dabbled in television and the occasional feature film. Lukas made his screen debut playing the "inspector" in the Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz comedy The Long Long Trailer (1954). His other film credits include The Watermelon Man (1970), The Shaggy D.A. (1976), and Memories of Me (1988). Lukas also guest-starred on such television series as Family Affair, St. Elsewhere, and Little House on the Prairie.

Trivia: Nestor Paiva had the indeterminate ethnic features and gift for dialects that enabled him to play virtually every nationality. Though frequently pegged as a Spaniard, a Greek, a Portuguese, an Italian, an Arab, an even (on radio, at least) an African-American, Paiva was actually born in Fresno, California. A holder of an A.B. degree from the University of California at Berkeley, Paiva developed an interest in acting while performing in college theatricals. Proficient in several languages, Paiva made his stage bow at Berkeley's Greek Theatre in a production of Antigone. His subsequent professional stage career was confined to California; he caught the eye of the studios by appearing in a long-running Los Angeles production of The Drunkard, which costarred another future film player of note, Henry Brandon. He remained with The Drunkard from 1934 to 1945, finally dropping out when his workload in films became too heavy. Paiva appeared in roles both large and small in so many films that it's hard to find a representative appearance. Fans of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby can take in a good cross-section of Paiva's work via his appearances in Road to Morocco (1942), Road to Utopia (1945) and Road to Rio (1947); he has a bit as a street peddler in Morocco, is desperado McGurk in Utopia, and plays the Brazilian theatre manager who isn't fooled by the Wiere Brothers' attempt to pass themselves off as Americans ("You're een the groove, Jackson") in Rio. During his busiest period, 1945 through 1948, Paiva appeared in no fewer than 117 films. The familiar canteloupe-shaped mug and hyperactive eyebrows of Nestor Paiva graced many a film and TV program until his death in 1966; his final film, the William Castle comedy The Spirit is Willing (1967), was released posthumously.