Trivia: After being selected to appear on Name That Tune (he was discovered in Manhattan by a talent scout), and winning, child actor Eddie Hodges achieved prominence in 1957 when he was cast as lisping Iowa youngster Winthrop Paroo in the Broadway hit The Music Man. Two years later, he was co-starring in the heady company of Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, and Edward G. Robinson in Frank Capra's A Hole in the Head (1959), in which he and Sinatra introduced the popular Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn tune "High Hopes." 1960 was a particularly fruitful year for the 13-year-old Hodges; in addition to starring in MGM's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he headlined his own hour-long TV special. Like most juvenile performers, his popularity faded as he grew older, and by 1968 he was out of show business. But before disappearing from public view, Eddie Hodges delivered a hilarious performance as a lovestruck teenager in a 1964 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Trivia: Born Leonard Rosenberg, Randall moved to New York at age 19 and studied theater with Sanford Meisner and at the Neighborhood Playhouse. His stage debut was in The Circle of Chalk (1941). From 1942-46 he served with the U.S. Army, following which he acted on radio and TV. He began appearing onscreen in 1957 and was a fairly busy film actor through the mid '60s. He is best known for his work on TV, particularly for his portrayal of fastidious Felix Unger on the sitcom "The Odd Couple." He also starred or costarred in the series "One Man's Family," "Mr. Peepers," "The Tony Randall Show," and "Love, Sidney." He frequently appears on TV talk shows, where he is witty, erudite, and urbane. In 1991 he created the National Actors Theater, a repertory company; its purpose is to bring star-filled classic plays to broad-based audiences at low prices.

Trivia: Because the two actresses tended to play the same type of overwrought roles in the mid-1950s, juvenile stars Patty McCormick and Patty Duke were sometimes mistaken for one another during this period. But once seen in her starmaking role as the homicidal preteen Rhoda Penmark in The Bad Seed (in which she starred on Broadway in 1954 and in the film version in 1956), Patty McCormick can never be confused with anyone else. A pro from the age of four, McCormick was in films from 1951 and TV from 1953. After Bad Seed, she was second-billed as a bratty child star in the theatrical-film Kathy O' (1957) and was headlined in her own 1958 sitcom, Peck's Bad Girl. The uniqueness that characterized McCormick's appearances as a child evaporated when she reached maturity; though she was more than competent playing disturbed teenagers in films like The Miniskirt Mob (1967) and The Young Runaways (1968), these were parts that could have been played equally well by a dozen other young actresses. She acted sporadically into the 1970s and 1980s, her longest assignment being the role of Jeffrey Tambor's upwardly mobile wife on the TV sitcom The Ropers. In 1995, Patty McCormick starred in the direct-to-video Mommy, playing a grown-up edition of the murderous Rhoda from The Bad Seed.

Trivia: The oldest child of an itinerant bridge builder, actor Neville Brand intended to make the military his career, and indeed spent ten years in uniform. During World War II, he became America's fourth most decorated soldier when he wiped out a German 50-caliber machine gun nest. He also decided that he'd seek out another line of work as soon as his hitch was up. Paying for acting classes with his GI Bill, he started his career off-Broadway. In 1949, he made his film debut in D.O.A., playing a psychotic hoodlum who delights in punching poisoned hero Edmond O'Brien in the stomach. Brand spent most of the early '50s at 20th Century Fox, a studio that surprisingly downplayed the actor's war record by shuttling him from one unstressed supporting role to another (though he's the principal villain in 1950's Where the Sidewalk Ends, he receives no screen credit). He fared far better on television, where he won the Sylvania Award for his portrayal of Huey Long in a 1958 telestaging of All the King's Men. Even better received was his portrayal of Al Capone on the TV series The Untouchables, a characterization he repeated in the 1961 theatrical feature The George Raft Story. In 1966, Brand briefly shed his bad-guy image to play the broadly hilarious role of bumbling Texas Ranger Reese Bennett on the TV Western series Laredo. His off-camera reputation for pugnacity and elbow-bending was tempered by his unswerving loyalty to his friends and his insatiable desire to better himself intellectually (his private library was one of the largest in Hollywood, boasting some 5000 titles). Fighting a losing battle against emphysema during his last years, Neville Brand died at the age of 70.

Trivia: One of the few non-Jewish performers to cut his teeth on the tourist resort circuit, Mickey Shaughnessy went on to appear in a WWII army revue, then spent the postwar years performing a nightclub comedy act. His secondary role in 1952's The Marrying Kind led to a long screen career, wherein the burly Shaughnessy was frequently cast as big, dumb lugs with golden hearts. While contracted with MGM, Shaughnessy appeared in Don't Go Near the Water (1955) as a potty-mouthed sailor (whose cuss words were amusingly bleeped out on the soundtrack), in Designing Women (1957) as a punch-drunk boxer, and in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960) as the Duke; he also essayed a rare unsympathetic role in 1958's The Sheepman. As Jerry Lewis' Navy buddy-turned-wrestler in Don't Give up the Ship (1959), Shaughnessy effortlessly stole the film from Lewis, which may explain why the two were never reteamed. After closing out his film career in the early '60s, Mickey Shaughnessy revived his nightclub act, priding himself on always working "clean" even into the 1980s.

Trivia: Andy Devine was born in Kingman, Arizona, where his father ran a hotel. During his youth, Devine was a self-confessed hellraiser, and stories of his rowdy antics are still part of Kingman folklore (though they've undoubtedly improved in the telling). His trademarked ratchety voice was the result of a childhood accident, when he fell while carrying a stick in his mouth, resulting in permanent vocal-chord injuries. A star football player at Santa Clara University, Andy decided to break into movies in 1926; he was almost immediately cast in Universal's two-reel series The Collegians. When talkies came, Devine was convinced that his voice was unsuitable for the microphone. He reportedly became so despondent at one point that he attempted to commit suicide by asphyxiation, only to discover that his landlady had turned off the gas! Devine needn't have worried; his voice became his greatest asset, and from 1930 until his retirement, he was very much in demand for bucolic comedy roles. In 1937 he became a regular on Jack Benny's radio program, his howl of "Hiya, Buck!" becoming a national catchphrase. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, he was a popular comedy sidekick in the western films of Roy Rogers. Later film assignments included his atypical performance as a corrupt Kansas City cop in Jack Webb's Pete Kelly's Blues (1955). Most baby boomers retain fond memories of Devine's TV appearances as Jingles Jones on the long-running western series Wild Bill Hickock, and as host of the Saturday morning kid's program Andy's Gang. In his later years, Devine cut down his performing activities, preferring to stay on his Van Nuys (California) ranch with his wife and children. Made a very wealthy man thanks to real estate investments, Andy Devine abandoned moviemaking in 1970, resurfacing only to provide voices for a brace of Disney cartoon features; he remained active in civic and charitable affairs, at one juncture serving as honorary mayor of Van Nuys.

Trivia: Although his career lacked the resilience of Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton may well have been the most gifted comedian to emerge from the cinema's silent era. And while his skills as a gag writer and physical comic were remarkable, Keaton was one clown whose understanding of the film medium was just as great as his talent for taking a pratfall. Keaton, however, had a roller-coaster career in which he fell just as far as he rose, though he was fortunate enough to enjoy a comeback in the later years of his life. Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895, to Joseph Hallie Keaton and Myra Cutler Keaton, a pair of vaudeville performers. Spending his childhood on the road with his family, he earned the nickname Buster at the age of six months; as legend has it, after the young Keaton fell down a flight of steps at a theater, a magician on the bill, Harry Houdini, said to the lad's father, "What a buster your kid took!" The name stuck, and, by the age of three, the youngster was appearing as part of his parents act whenever they could evade child labor laws. In vaudeville, Keaton developed remarkable talents as an acrobatic comedian with a superb sense of timing, and became a rising star by his teens. His father, however, had developed a serious drinking problem, which strained his relationship with his son and caused serious problems with their very physical stage act, which, in early 1917, Buster left. He appeared in a Broadway comic revue later that year, but the key to Keaton's future came when he met a fellow vaudeville comedian. Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was starring in a low-budget two-reel screen comedy, The Butcher Boy, and invited Keaton to play a small role in the picture. The two hit it off and became a successful onscreen team, starring in a long string of comic hits. Fascinated by the medium of film, Keaton soon began writing their pictures, and assisted in directing them; Keaton was soon starring in his own films, as well, though he and Arbuckle remained lifelong close friends. Keaton developed a distinctive comic style which merged slapstick with a sophisticated sense of visual absurdity, and often included gags which made the most of the film medium, involving props, sets, and visual trickery that would have been impossible on the vaudeville stage. Keaton also developed his personal visual trademark, an unsmiling deadpan demeanor which made his epic-scale gags even funnier. Beginning with his first solo short subjects in 1920, The High Sign and One Week, Keaton became a major star, and after a series of successful two-reelers, including Cops and The Balloonatic, Keaton moved up to feature-length comedies in 1923 with the farcical The Three Ages. Keaton reached the peak of his craft with the features which followed, including Sherlock Jr., Seven Chances, The Navigator, Steamboat Bill, Jr., and the Civil War comedy The General, now universally regarded as Keaton's masterpiece. Independent producer Joseph M. Schenck was the man behind Fatty Arbuckle's comedies when Keaton came aboard, and they continued to work together when Keaton struck out on his own. Schenck believed in the comic's talent and allowed him to work without interference, resulting in a string of creative and popular triumphs. Then, in 1928 -- and with Keaton's approval -- Schenck sold his contract to the biggest studio in Hollywood, Metro Goldwyn Mayer. While Keaton's first vehicle for MGM, The Cameraman, was up to his usual high standards, he chafed at the studio's interference and insistence that the filmmaker work within the same boundaries as its other employees. With outside writers and directors controlling Keaton with a strong hand, his work suffered tremendously. Coupled with a crumbling marriage (to Natalie Talmadge, whom he wed in 1920), Keaton began to drink heavily. With the advent of sound, MGM seemed to have even less of an idea of what to do with the actor/director, and starred him in a series of second-rate comedies with Jimmy Durante, whose broad style did not mesh well with Keaton. By 1934, Keaton had hit bottom -- MGM fired him, declaring him unreliable after he refused to work on scripts he felt were inferior. His marriage to Talmadge had ended, and he impulsively (and while drunk) married Mae Scriven, a union that would last only three years. The IRS sued him for 28,000 dollars in back taxes. And his alcoholism had become so destructive that he was committed to a sanitarium, where he was placed in a straight jacket. Keaton eventually got his drinking problem under control, but his career in Hollywood was in dire straits. He starred in a series of low-budget short subjects for the tiny Educational Pictures and later Columbia Pictures, none of which made much of an impression. Keaton also appeared on-stage in touring productions of such comedies as The Gorilla, and, ironically, found himself employed as a gag writer and director at MGM, albeit at a fraction of his former salary. He also appeared in a few European comedies, where audiences held him in greater regard than in the U.S. But that began to change in 1949, when a cover story in Life magazine on great clowns of the silent movies reminded audiences of his comic legacy. Keaton began making guest appearances on television shows, and the now sober star made his way back into supporting roles in major movies (most notably Around the World in 80 Days and Charlie Chaplin's Limelight). In 1957, Keaton sold the rights to his life story to Paramount Pictures, who hired him as a technical advisor for The Buster Keaton Story. While the film was a severe disappointment (and had little to do with the facts of his life), the financial windfall was enough for Keaton to buy a new house, where he and his third wife, Eleanor Norris (whom Keaton wed in 1940), lived for the rest of their lives. Keaton found himself in increasing demand in the '60s, appearing in several of American International Pictures' "Beach" musicals (in which he was allowed to work up his own gags) and a number of television ad campaigns. He also starred in a short film created by playwright Samuel Beckett, appearing in a loving tribute to his silent films, The Railrodder, and landed a memorable role in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Sadly, Keaton's second wave of success came to an end on February 1, 1966, when he lost a lengthy battle with lung cancer.

Trivia: Scottish actor Finlay Currie's pre-theatrical occupations included choirmaster and organist. He entered show business at the turn of the century as a musical performer, billed as "Harry Calvo, the double-voiced vocalist." For ten years, Currie toured Australia as principal comedian in Sir Benjamin Fuller's acting troupe. He returned to the London stage in 1930, where over the next three decades he would appear in such hits as The Last Mile and Death of a Salesman. In films from 1932, Currie's most memorable screen role was as the surly convict Magwitch in Great Expectations (1946). He spent much of the early 1950s in Hollywood, playing such forceful character roles as St. Peter in Quo Vadis (1951) and the mysterious Mr. Shunderson in People Will Talk (1951). Still in harness into the mid-1960s, Finlay Currie was at one juncture the oldest working actor in Great Britain.

Trivia: After making her first film appearance at age 13, Josephine Hutchinson attended the Cornish School of Music and Drama. A leading Broadway actress of the late 1920s, Hutchinson was most closely associated with the title role in Eva Le Gailliene's Civic Repertory Company production of Alice in Wonderland. Her impeccable credentials notwithstanding, Hutchinson's earliest movie publicity emphasized the fact that hers was the longest name of any movie leading lady. She spent most of her first filmmaking decade at Warner Bros., acting opposite Dick Powell, Pat O'Brien, and, in The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), Paul Muni. At Universal, she played the wife of Basil Rathbone in The Son of Frankenstein (1939), an experience she cherished primarily because of the warm camaraderie between her co-stars Rathbone, Boris Karloff and Lionel Atwill. Josephine Hutchinson worked steadily in films and television into the 1970s, most often playing firm, forceful elderly women.

Trivia: The Florida-born daughter of a cottonbroker father and concert-singer mother, Judy Canova joined her siblings in a radio singing act in Jacksonville when she was 10-years old. Judy had hoped to attend the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, but the exigencies of the Depression depleted her family's income. Relocating in New York City with her mother, Judy studied tap-dancing, taught a contortion-dancing class, and hit the nightclub circuit. Discovered by Rudy Vallee, Judy became a solo "hillbilly" singer on Vallee's radio show, then worked on bandleader Paul Whiteman's series, establishing herself as a cornpone comedienne. After appearing with her brother and sister in a 1934 Hollywood stage revue, Judy made her movie debut in Warner Bros. In Caliente, singing a comic reprise of the film's hit song "The Lady in Red." More radio and vaudeville work followed, and then Judy co-starred with Phil Silvers in the 1939 Broadway musical Yokel Boy. This led to a 15-year association with Republic Pictures, where Judy became one of that studio's biggest moneymakers in such raucous vehicles as Sis Hopkins (1941), Sleepy Lagoon (1942), Oklahoma Annie (1946) and Carolina Cannonball (1955). Among her best films were a pair of co-starring stints with Joe E. Brown, Joan of Ozark (1942) and Chatterbox (1943). In 1943, she inaugurated her own radio comedy series on CBS, which garnered high ratings for the next twelve years. After both her radio and movie contracts expired in 1955, Judy was seen infrequently on television and in nightclubs; her last film appearances were in 1960's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and 1976's Cannonball. Married four times, Judy Canova was the mother of TV actress Diana Canova of Soap fame.

Trivia: A leading light of network radio in the 1940s and 1950s, actor Parley Baer appeared on virtually every major program emanating from Los Angeles. Baer is most closely associated with the radio version of Gunsmoke, in which, from 1955 to 1961, he played Dodge City deputy Chester Proudfoot. Those who worked on Gunsmoke have had nothing but the kindest words for Baer, who endeared himself to his colleagues via his dedication, professionalism, and weekly purchase of donuts for the rehearsal sessions. The jowly, prematurely balding Baer began free-lancing in films around 1949. He played a number of small parts at 20th Century-Fox (his largest, and least typical, was the Nazi sergeant in 1957's The Young Lions), and later showed up in such films as Warner Bros.' Gypsy (1963) and Universal's Counterpoint (1993). On television, Baer portrayed Darby on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Mayor Stoner on The Andy Griffith Show (1962-63 season) and Mr. Hamble on the 1966 Red Buttons sitcom The Double Life of Henry Phyfe. Active into the 1990s--he was seen as the Senate Majority Leader in 1993's Dave--Parley Baer is most familiar to the public as the voice of commercialdom's Keebler Elf.

Trivia: Though best known to modern filmgoers as a horror star, cadaverous John Carradine was, in his prime, one of the most versatile character actors on the silver screen. The son of a journalist father and physician mother, Carradine was given an expensive education in Philadelphia and New York. Upon graduating from the Graphic Arts School, he intended to make his living as a painter and sculptor, but in 1923 he was sidetracked into acting. Working for a series of low-paying stock companies throughout the 1920s, he made ends meet as a quick-sketch portrait painter and scenic designer. He came to Hollywood in 1930, where his extensive talents and eccentric behavior almost immediately brought him to the attention of casting directors. He played a dizzying variety of distinctive bit parts -- a huntsman in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a crowd agitator in Les Miserables (1935) -- before he was signed to a 20th Century Fox contract in 1936. His first major role was the sadistic prison guard in John Ford's Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), which launched a long and fruitful association with Ford, culminating in such memorable screen characterizations as the gentleman gambler in Stagecoach (1939) and Preacher Casy ("I lost the callin'!") in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Usually typecast as a villain, Carradine occasionally surprised his followers with non-villainous roles like the philosophical cab driver in Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) and Abraham Lincoln in Of Human Hearts (1938). Throughout his Hollywood years, Carradine's first love remained the theater; to fund his various stage projects (which included his own Shakespearean troupe), he had no qualms about accepting film work in the lowest of low-budget productions. Ironically, it was in one of these Poverty Row cheapies, PRC's Bluebeard (1944), that the actor delivered what many consider his finest performance. Though he occasionally appeared in an A-picture in the 1950s and 1960s (The Ten Commandments, Cheyenne Autumn), Carradine was pretty much consigned to cheapies during those decades, including such horror epics as The Black Sleep (1956), The Unearthly (1957), and the notorious Billy the Kid Meets Dracula (1966). He also appeared in innumerable television programs, among them Twilight Zone, The Munsters, Thriller, and The Red Skelton Show, and from 1962 to 1964 enjoyed a long Broadway run as courtesan-procurer Lycus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Though painfully crippled by arthritis in his last years, Carradine never stopped working, showing up in films ranging from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) to Peggy Sue Got Married (1984). Married four times, John Carradine was the father of actors David, Keith, Robert, and Bruce Carradine.

Trivia: Cadaverous, hollow-eyed Royal Dano made his theatrical entree as a minor player in the Broadway musical hit Finian's Rainbow. Born in New York City in 1922, he manifested a wanderlust that made him leave home at age 12 to travel around the country, and even after he returned home -- and eventually graduated from New York University -- he often journeyed far from the city on his own. He made his acting debut while in the United States Army during World War II, as part of a Special Services unit, and came to Broadway in the immediate postwar era. In films from 1950, he received his first important part, the Tattered Soldier, in John Huston's 1951 adaptation of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. Thereafter, he was often seen as a Western villain, though seldom of the cliched get-outta-town variety; in Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954), for example, he fleshed out an ordinary bad-guy type by playing the character as a compulsive reader with a tubercular cough. He likewise did a lot with a little when cast as Mildred Natwick's deep-brooding offspring in Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry. With his deep, resonant speaking voice and intense eyes, Dano could make a recitation of the telephone book sound impressive and significant, and some of his non-baddie characters include the prophet Elijah, who predicts the destruction of the Pequod and the death of Ahab, in Huston's Moby Dick (1956), Peter in The King of Kings (1961) and Mayor Cermak in Capone (1975); in addition, he played Abraham Lincoln in a multipart installment of the mid-'50s TV anthology Omnibus written by James Agee. On the small screen, the producers of The Rifleman got a huge amount of mileage out of his talent in five episodes in as many seasons, most notably in "Day of Reckoning" as a gunman-turned-preacher. He also appeared in memorable guest roles in the high-rent western series The Virginian, The Big Valley, and Bonanza, and had what was probably his best television role of all as the tragically insensitive father in the two-part Little House On The Prairie episode "Sylvia." Toward the end of his life, Royal Dano had no qualms about accepting questionable projects like 1990's Spaced Invaders, but here as elsewhere, he was always given a chance to shine; one of Dano's best and most bizarre latter-day roles was in Teachers (1982), as the home-room supervisor who dies of a heart attack in his first scene -- and remains in his chair, unnoticed and unmolested, until the fadeout.

Trivia: Famed for his country-bumpkin features and fruity vocal intonations, American actor Sterling Holloway left his native Georgia as a teenager to study acting in New York City. Working through the Theatre Guild, the young Holloway was cast in the first Broadway production of songwriters Rodgers and Hart, Garrick Gaieties. In the 1925 edition of the revue, Holloway introduced the Rodgers-Hart standard "I'll Take Manhattan;" in the 1926 version, the actor introduced another hit, "Mountain Greenery." Hollywood beckoned, and Holloway made a group of silent two-reelers and one feature, the Wallace Beery vehicle Casey at the Bat (1927), before he was fired by the higher-ups because they deemed his face "too grotesque" for movies. Small wonder that Holloway would insist in later years that he was never satisfied with any of the work Hollywood would throw his way, and longed for the satisfaction of stage work. When talkies came, Holloway's distinctive voice made him much in demand, and from 1932 through the late '40s he became the archetypal soda jerk, messenger boy, and backwoods rube. His most rewarding assignments came from Walt Disney Studios, where Holloway provided delightful voiceovers for such cartoon productions as Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), Alice in Wonderland (1951), Ben and Me (1954) and The Jungle Book (1967). Holloway's most enduring role at Disney was as the wistful voice of Winnie the Pooh in a group of mid-'60s animated shorts. On the "live" front, Holloway became fed up of movie work one day when he found his character being referred to as "boy" - and he was past forty at the time. A few satisfactory film moments were enjoyed by Holloway as he grew older; he starred in an above-average series of two reel comedies for Columbia Pictures from 1946 to 1948 (in one of these, 1948's Flat Feat, he convincingly and hilariously impersonated a gangster), and in 1956 he had what was probably the most bizarre assignment of his career when he played a "groovy" hipster in the low-budget musical Shake, Rattle and Rock (1956). Holloway worked prodigiously in TV during the '50s and '60s as a regular or semi-regular on such series as The Life of Riley, Adventures of Superman and The Baileys of Balboa. Edging into retirement in the '70s, Sterling Holloway preferred to stay in his lavish hilltop house in San Laguna, California, where he maintained one of the most impressive and expensive collections of modern paintings in the world.

Trivia: A perpetually haggard character actor with hound-dog eyes and the rare ability to alternate between menace and earnest at a moment's notice, Harry Dean Stanton has proven one of the most enduring and endearing actors of his generation. From his early days riding the range in Gunsmoke and Rawhide to a poignant turn in David Lynch's uncharacteristically sentimental drama The Straight Story, Stanton can always be counted on to turn in a memorable performance no matter how small the role. A West Irvine, KY, native who served in World War II before returning stateside to attend the University of Kentucky, it was while appearing in a college production of Pygmalion that Stanton first began to realize his love for acting. Dropping out of school three years later to move to California and train at the Pasadena Playhouse, Stanton found himself in good company while training alongside such future greats as Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall. A stateside tour with the American Male Chorus and a stint in New York children's theater found Stanton continuing to hone his skills, and after packing his bags for Hollywood shortly thereafter, numerous television roles were quick to follow. Billed Dean Stanton in his early years and often carrying the weight of the screen baddie, Stanton gunned down the best of them in numerous early Westerns before a soulful turn in Cool Hand Luke showed that he was capable of much more. Though a role in The Godfather Part II offered momentary cinematic redemption, it wasn't long before Stanton was back to his old antics in the 1976 Marlon Brando Western The Missouri Breaks. After once again utilizing his musical talents as a country & western singer in The Rose (1979) and meeting a gruesome demise in the sci-fi classic Alien, roles in such popular early '80s efforts as Private Benjamin, Escape From New York, and Christine began to gain Stanton growing recognition among mainstream film audiences; and then a trio of career-defining roles in the mid-'80s proved the windfall that would propel the rest of Stanton's career. Cast as a veteran repo man opposite Emilio Estevez in director Alex Cox's cult classic Repo Man (1984), Stanton's hilarious, invigorated performance perfectly gelled with the offbeat sensibilities of the truly original tale involving punk-rockers, aliens, and a mysteriously omnipresent plate o' shrimp. After sending his sons off into the mountains to fight communists in the jingoistic actioner Red Dawn (also 1984) Stanton essayed what was perhaps his most dramatically demanding role to date in director Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas. Cast as a broken man whose brother attempts to help him remember why he walked out on his family years before, Stanton's devastating performance provided the emotional core to what was perhaps one of the essential films of the 1980s. A subsequent role as Molly Ringwald's character's perpetually unemployed father in 1986's Pretty in Pink, while perhaps not quite as emotionally draining, offered a tender characterization that would forever hold him a place in the hearts of those raised on 1980s cinema. In 1988 Stanton essayed the role of Paul the Apostle in director Martin Scorsese's controversial religious epic The Last Temptation of Christ. By the 1990s Stanton was a widely recognized icon of American cinema, and following memorably quirky roles as an eccentric patriarch in Twister and a desperate private detective in David Lynch's Wild at Heart (both 1990), he settled into memorable roles in such efforts as Against the Wall (1994), Never Talk to Strangers (1995), and the sentimental drama The Mighty (1998). In 1996, Stanton made news when he was pistol whipped by thieves who broke into his home and stole his car (which was eventually returned thanks to a tracking device). Having previously teamed with director Lynch earlier in the decade, fans were delighted at Stanton's poignant performance in 1999's The Straight Story. Still going strong into the new millennium, Stanton could be spotted in such efforts as The Pledge (2001; starring longtime friend and former roommate Jack Nicholson), Sonny (2002), and The Big Bounce (2004). In addition to his acting career, Stanton can often be spotted around Hollywood performing with his band, The Harry Dean Stanton Band.

Trivia: Actress Minerva Urecal claimed that her last name was an amalgam of her family home town of Eureka, California. True or not, Urecal would spend the balance of her life in California, specifically Hollywood. Making the transition from stage to screen in 1934, Ms. Urecal appeared in innumerable bits, usually as cleaning women, shopkeepers and hatchet-faced landladies. In B-pictures and 2-reelers of the 1940s, she established herself as a less expensive Marjorie Main type; her range now encompassed society dowagers (see the East Side Kids' Mr. Muggs Steps Out) and Mrs. Danvers-like housekeepers (see Bela Lugosi's The Ape Man). With the emergence of television, Minerva Urecal entered the "guest star" phase of her career. She achieved top billing in the 1958 TV sitcom Tugboat Annie, and replaced Hope Emerson as Mother for the 1959-60 season of the weekly detective series Peter Gunn. Minerva Urecal was active up until the early '60s, when she enjoyed some of the most sizeable roles of her career, notably the easily offended Swedish cook in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962) and the town harridan who is turned to stone in Seven Faces of Dr. Lao (1964).

Trivia: The stepdaughter of TV director Montgomery Pittman, Sherry Jackson made her first film in 1950, at age 8. Jackson played Susie Kettle in a few of Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle entries, and was co-starred in a handful of Warner Bros. films, most prominently as John Wayne's daughter in Trouble Along the Way. In 1953, she was hired to play Danny Thomas' daughter Terry on the long-running TV sitcom Make Room for Daddy. Having outgrown the role by 1959, she free-lanced throughout the 1960s, showing up in guest-star assignments in such TV series as The Twilight Zone and Star Trek. Sporadically active into the 1990s, Sherry Jackson was most recently seen in the 1992 production Daughters of the Dust.

Trivia: Lithe, dark-haired Fred Coby (born Frederick G. Beckner Jr.) turned into freakish Rondo Hatton in the 1946 horror melodrama The Brute Man, a chiller so tasteless and badly made that Universal sold it outright to Poverty Row company PRC. Coby stayed with PRC for Don Ricardo Returns (1946), a Zorro rip-off written by actor Duncan Renaldo and based on Johnston McCulley, the creator of the original. Although handsome -- Coby's slight resemblance to Tyrone Power may have won him the role in the first place -- Don Ricardo was too cheaply made to have any impact on the moviegoing audience. He spent the remainder of his career as a stunt performer and bit player.

Trivia: Canadian actor Henry Corden played numerous character roles in U.S. films, on stage and on television. He was typically cast as a comical, avaricious Arab. Corden had a distinctive voice and frequently voiced children's cartoons.

Trivia: The son of famed movie villain Fred Kohler and actress Maxine Marshall, American actor Fred Kohler Jr.'s own film career began in 1930. Big and brawny, the younger Kohler was a natural for outdoor films, westerns in particular. In 1935, producer William Berke starred Kohler in a brace of "B" horse operas, Toll of the Desert and The Pecos Kid. But like his father before him, Fred seemed more at home on the wrong side of the law. He played minor heavies and utility roles at several studios, mainly Paramount and RKO. He frequently showed up in the films of directors Cecil B. DeMille and John Ford; in Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln, he played small-town lout Scrub White, whose murder sets in motion the film's classic courtroom finale. He remained active until 1968, nearly always in westerns. On two occasions, Kohler and his father appeared in the same film: the more memorable of the two was RKO's Lawless Valley, in which they played father-and-son outlaws. In a priceless scene, Fred Kohler Jr. responds to one of his father's wicked schemes by shouting "Aw, that's crazy!," whereupon Fred Sr. growls "Careful, son, you're talkin' to your dad, ya know!"