Trivia: American actor Robert Cummings studied for an engineer's degree at several colleges before concentrating his energies at the American School of Dramatic Arts. After returning from a trip to England, he became possessed with the notion that he could best conquer Hollywood if he passed himself off as a British actor, so for a brief uncomfortable period he called himself Blade Stanhope Conway. The best he could get was an extra part in Laurel and Hardy's Sons of the Desert (1933); after that, he renamed himself Brice Hutchens, under which name he played on Broadway with a magic act in Ziegfeld Follies of 1934. As plain old Robert Cummings, the actor made his film debut in Paramount's So Red the Rose (1935), in which he was killed off in the Civil War before the first reel was over. He finally got a meaty hysteria scene as a condemned prisoner in The Accusing Finger (1936) -- but thereafter played almost nothing but comedy at Paramount. Stronger dramatic roles came Cummings' way in Kings Row (1941) and Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942). By the early 1950s, the formerly callow Cummings had matured enough to be convincing as the "other man" in the Hitchcock thriller Dial M for Murder (1954), and in the difficult role of the compassionate Juror Number 8 in the original 1955 TV production of Twelve Angry Men. He also gained valuable off-camera prestige as an officer in the Air Force Reserves (he'd been a licensed pilot since age 17). Still, Cummings' main reputation in this decade rested on two lighthearted TV situation comedies: My Hero, which lasted 39 episodes in 1952, and the more famous Bob Cummings Show, a.k.a. Love That Bob, which ran from 1955 through 1958. Playing glamour photographer Bob Collins in the latter series, Cummings perpetuated public TV reputation as an eternally youthful ladies' man (though the biggest laughs went to supporting actress Ann B. Davis (as Schultzy). Newspaper and magazine articles of the period made much of Cummings' seeming agelessness, which the actor chalked up to careful dieting, plenty of vitamins and exercise. That anyone would find it unusual that a 50-year-old man could retain his looks and sex appeal is astonishing in these days of such over-50 movie idols as Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, but such was the state of press agentry in the Love That Bob days. Two later TV series didn't do so well for Cummings, nor did his performances in such 1960s films as The Carpetbaggers (1963); still, critics would marvel at how well the now sixtyish actor was "holding up." Unfortunately, Cummings fell victim to Parkinson's disease in the 1980s, and the once-virile actor deteriorated rapidly both in mind and body before his death at age 82. In his prime, however, Cummings was one of those rare film actors who managed to retain his fame and popularity even though he made relatively few films of importance.

Trivia: Richard Basehart was too much of an actor (and almost too good an actor) to ever be a movie star -- his range was sufficient to allow him to play murderers, psychopaths, sociopaths, and would-be suicides in 20 years' worth of theatrical films in totally convincing fashion, but also to portray a hero in the longest-running science fiction/adventure series on network television. Without ever achieving stardom, he became one of the most respected performers of his generation in theater, film, and television. Born John Richard Basehart in Zanesville, OH, in 1914, he spent a part of his childhood in an orphanage after the death of his mother, when his father, Harry Basehart, found himself unable to look after the four children left in his care. The younger Basehart considered a career in journalism like his father, but when he was 13, he began acting in small roles in a local theater company and came to enjoy performing. In the mid-'30s, he joined Jasper Deeter's famed Hedgerow Theater company in Rose Valley, PA. By the end of the 1930s, he'd set his sights on a Broadway career and moved to New York. During the 1939 season, while working in stock, Basehart met an actress named Stephanie Klein, and the two were married in early 1940. He continued trying to establish a foothold in New York and in 1942, joined Margaret Webster's theater company. Basehart's breakthrough role came during 1945 in the play The Hasty Heart, in which director Bretaigne Windust cast him in the central role of the proud, dying young Scottish soldier. Basehart won the 1945 New York Drama Critics Award for his performance and was named the most promising newcomer of the season. Not only did Broadway producers take notice of Basehart but so did Hollywood, and he was soon signed to a movie contract. Thus began a screen career that lasted nearly 40 years, starting with Repeat Performance (1947), a thriller starring Joan Leslie. He followed this with Cry Wolf (1947), an adventure yarn also starring Barbara Stanwyck, Errol Flynn, and Geraldine Brooks. Basehart was unusually careful as a new Hollywood performer to vary his roles and avoid getting typecast. His first of what proved a string of memorable portrayals was in He Walked By Night (1948), a fact-based thriller in which the actor played a brilliant but sociopathic electronics expert, responsible for a string of burglaries and for killing a police officer. Viewers who grew up knowing Basehart as the heroic figure on the series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in the 1960s are often startled to see him 20 years earlier in He Walked By Night as an almost feral presence, quietly fierce, threatening and stealthy in his efforts to escape detection and capture. Over the next two years, Basehart essayed a multitude of roles, in contemporary dramatic subjects and period dramas, the most interesting of which was Anthony Mann's Reign of Terror (1949), in which he portrayed Maximilien Robespierre, one of the chief architects of the bloodbath that followed in the wake of the French Revolution. In 1950, Basehart played one of the most difficult film roles of his career when he was cast in the fact-based movie Fourteen Hours, playing a young man who spends 14 hours on the ledge of an office building, threatening to jump. It was during the shooting of this movie that Basehart's wife, Stephanie, was taken ill with what proved to be a brain tumor, and died very suddenly. He finished work on the film and then left the United States, going to Italy where he began putting his life back together. This began when he met the actress Valentina Cortese, whom he married in 1951. The two worked together in one movie, The House on Telegraph Hill, directed by Robert Wise at 20th Century Fox, in which Basehart played the villain trying to murder Cortese for her estate. Basehart returned to Hollywood only intermittently for the next nine years, and his next appearance in an American movie wasn't until 1953, when he worked in Titanic, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb. It was during the decade that Basehart made his home in Europe that the actor became multilingual, and developed a serious following over there as a leading man; while other, older American performers were entering the final legs of their careers making pictures in France, Italy, or England, he was making important pictures and playing great roles, as the doomed, gentle clown in Federico Fellini's La Strada; a basically honest man driven into crime in The Good Die Young; the movie director threatened by a blackmailer in Joseph Losey's Finger of Guilt, and even an action-adventure hero in an Italian-made version of Cartouche (1957). John Huston specifically chose Basehart for the central role of Ishmael in his superb 1956 film version of Moby Dick. In 1957, Basehart tried reestablishing his Hollywood acting credentials with his portrayal of a conscience-stricken American officer in the movie Time Limit, which got good notices but proved to be a one-off American screen credit. In 1960, the actor divorced his second wife and left Italy behind. He returned to live permanently in America and restart his career, and began a new life, marrying again in 1962. He found that film roles weren't easily forthcoming, however -- the only part that came his way was the title role in Stuart Heisler's 1962 drama Hitler, in which Basehart gave an unusually complex, cerebral portrayal of the Nazi leader. He made numerous appearances in dramatic series such as Combat and Naked City, and television anthology shows including Playhouse 90 and Hallmark Hall of Fame. In 1964, Basehart accepted the offer of a starring role on a television series, beginning a four-year run on the Irwin Allen-produced Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, portraying Admiral Harriman Nelson. Thus began the steadiest work of his career, more than 100 episodes made Basehart a television star. He appeared in one movie during this period, John Sturges' thriller The Satan Bug (1965), in which he played the villain. Following the cancellation of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Basehart returned to acting on-stage, interspersed with work in made-for-television movies and occasional feature films, such as Rage (1972), directed by George C. Scott. He won critical acclaim for his work in the drama The Andersonville Trial, directed by George C. Scott, portraying Lt. Col. Henry Wirz, the commandant of the notorious Confederate prisoner of war camp, and made the rounds of guest star roles in television shows, perhaps most memorably the "Dagger of the Mind" episode of Columbo. Basehart and his third wife, Diana, also became known for their dedication to the cause of animal rights, founding the organization Actors and Others for Animals. During the final years of his life, he did some acting on television series such as Knight Rider and appeared in movies such as the hit Being There, but he was also very much in demand as a narrator, working on Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War (1980), among other projects. It was as a narrator that he made his final public appearance, at the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics. Basehart suffered a series of strokes, and passed away soon after.

Trivia: Redheaded leading lady Arlene Dahl was born, raised and educated in Minnesota. Supporting herself with innumerable day jobs, Dahl finally reached Broadway in 1945, the year before she was chosen New York's "Miss Rheingold." Her first film appearance in MGM's Life With Father (1947) was so fleeting as to be missable, but by 1948 Dahl was playing leads at MGM. In the tradition of such drop-dead-gorgeous redheads as Maureen O'Hara and Rhonda Fleming, Dahl often as not found herself cast in Technicolor swashbucklers, notably Caribbean (1952), Sangaree (1952) and Bengal Brigade (1953). In 1956 Dahl delivered an intimidatingly superb performance as a beautiful psycho in Allan Dwan's Slightly Scarlet. By the 1960s, Dahl was better known as a beauty-product promoter and glamour-advice columnist; her five marriages to such high-profile personalities as Fernando Lamas and Lex Barker also kept her in the public eye. Though her Arlene Dahl Enterprises cosmetics firm earned millions in its heyday, by the mid-1980s Dahl was broke, a fact which compelled her to resume her acting career. Arlene Dahl made her first film appearance in two decades in Night of the Warrior (1991); her co-star was her son, TV hearthrob Lorenzo Lamas.

Trivia: When college-hero-handsome Jess Barker was signed by producer Walter Wanger in 1935, he was billed as Philip Barker in such Wanger productions as Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936). He re-emerged as Jess Barker in the early 1940s, heading the casts in a handful of long-forgotten programmers. In Abbott and Costello's The Time of Their Lives (1946)., Barker plays the aristocratic fiance of Marjorie Reynolds. Barker is perhaps best known as the first husband of actress Susan Hayward; their 10-year union produced twin sons, whose custody Susan won after a bitter courtroom battle. His movie career damaged by adverse publicity, Jess Barker worked for a while in radio, then returned to the screen as a character actor in such films as Night Walker (1965).

Trivia: Upon receiving a master's degree in teaching at New York University, American actor Arnold Moss decided that the life of a teacher wasn't for him and set to find theatre work. Moss was engaged by the LeGallienne Civic Repertory Theatre, where he played his first villainous role in Peter Pan. Radio provided a great deal of work for Moss, whose deep, mellifluous voice was perfect for narration and commercial assignments; additionally, he produced and wrote for various radio series. The actor's first film was Temptation; with his Satanic eyebrows and raven-like features Moss was generally cast as high-born villains or sinister foreigners. Moss made two memorable appearances in Bob Hope films, first as Hope's Casablanca contact in the espionage spoof My Favorite Spy and then as a conniving Venetian doge in Casanova's Big Night. Arnold Moss was also shown to good advantage as the usurping Antonio in the 1960 Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Shakespeare's The Tempest, which starred Maurice Evans and Richard Burton.

Trivia: After graduating from NYU, New Jersey-born actor Norman Lloyd worked with Eva LeGalleine's company, then joined Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. He also appeared in the WPA's progressive Living Newspaper show, and was cast in the Broadway musical Johnny Appleseed. In Hollywood in 1941, Lloyd began a long friendship and professional association with director Alfred Hitchcock. Lloyd's first film was Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), in which he played the squirrelly Nazi spy Fry, who came to a spectacular end by plummeting from the Statue of Liberty. After a few more villainous film roles, Lloyd was given his first behind-the-scenes production job by director Lewis Milestone, working as an assistant on Milestone's Arch of Triumph (1948). A peripheral victim of the Hollywood blacklist, Lloyd was rescued professionally by Hitchcock, who utilized Lloyd as an actor, director and executive producer on Hitchcock's long-running TV series. Teamed with producer Joan Harrison, Hitchcock's "right arm," Lloyd co-produced a 1968 Broadway TV anthology, Journey to the Unknown. He continued directing episodic television throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and was the first-season producer of the syndicated weekly Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected. Still pursuing acting (though now as a "second career"), Norman Lloyd played the kindly Dr. Esterhaus on the 1980s TV drama St. Elsewhere.

Trivia: Originally intending to become a journalist, William Challee abandoned this dream when he began appearing in Chicago-based theatrical productions. Challee's Broadway career reached its peak in the late '30s with Wonder Boy. In films from 1943, he was usually seen as well-dressed gangsters, pushy reporters, and grim military officers. William Challee's later credits included such roles as Nicholas Duprea in the Jack Nicholson starrer Five Easy Pieces.

Trivia: Gravel-voiced, granite-faced stage actor Charles McGraw made his first film The Moon is Down in 1943. At first it seemed as though McGraw would spend his movie career languishing in villainy, but while working at RKO in the late 1940s-early 1950s, the actor developed into an unorthodox but fascinating leading man. His shining hour (actually 72 minutes) was the role of the embittered detective assigned to protect mob witness Marie Windsor in the 1952 noir classic The Narrow Margin. McGraw continued being cast in the raffish-hero mold on television, essaying the lead in the 1954 syndicated series Adventures of Falcon and assuming the Bogartesque role of café owner Rick Blaine in the 1955 weekly TV adaptation of Casablanca (1955) (his last regular TV work was the supporting part of Captain Hughes on the 1971 Henry Fonda starrer The Smith Family). Active until the mid-1970s, Charles McGraw growled and scowled his way through such choice character roles as gladiator trainer Marcellus in Spartacus (1960), Sebastian Sholes in Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), and The Preacher in the cult favorite A Boy and His Dog (1975).

Trivia: Whenever actor Ed Platt blew one of his lines in his role of "The Chief" in the TV comedy series Get Smart, star Don Adams would cry out "Is John Doucette available?" Adams was kidding, of course, but he was not alone in his high regard for the skill and versatility of the deep-voiced, granite-featured Doucette. In films on a regular basis since 1947 (he'd made his official movie debut in 1943's Two Tickets to London), Doucette was usually cast in roles calling for bad-tempered menace, but was also adept at dispensing dignity and authority. He was equally at home with the archaic dialogue of Julius Caesar (1953) and Cleopatra (1963) as he was with the 20th-century military patois of 1970's Patton, in which he played General Truscott. John Doucette's many TV credits include a season on the syndicated MacDonald Carey vehicle Lock-Up (1959), and the role of Captain Andrews on The Partners (1971), starring Doucette's old friend and admirer Don Adams.

Trivia: American actress Beulah Bondi entered the theatre at age 7, playing the male role of Little Lord Fauntleroy; it would be her last role "in drag" and one of the very few times that she'd play a character her own age. Upon graduation from Valparaiso University, she joined a stock company, working throughout the US until her 1925 Broadway debut in Wild Birds. Even in her late twenties and early thirties, Bondi specialized in playing mothers, grandmothers and society dowagers. She made her first film, Street Scene, in 1931, concentrating on movies thereafter. She is best known to modern film fans for her role as James Stewart's mother in the Christmastime favorite It's a Wonderful Life (1946). It was but one of several occasions (among them Vivacious Lady [1938] and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939]) that the actress played Stewart's mother; as late as 1971, Bondi was essaying the same role in the short-lived sitcom The Jimmy Stewart Show. Even after her "official" screen retirement - her last film was Tammy and the Doctor (1963), in which, not surprisingly, she played a wealthy old invalid - Bondi kept herself open for television roles, including an Emmy-winning 1977 performance on the dramatic TV series The Waltons.

Trivia: A distinguished member of Broadway's famed Group Theater, with whom he appeared in Casey Jones (1938) and Night Music (1940), Clancy Cooper entered films with Warner Bros. in 1941. But despite his distinctive theater pedigree, Cooper's busy screen career proved middling at best and he mainly played bit roles. A notable exception came in the 1944 serial Haunted Harbor, as one of hero Kane Richmond's two sidekicks. A veteran of more than 100 feature films, the veteran actor went on to also embrace television, appearing in over 200 episodes in shows such as The Lone Ranger, Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Gunsmoke, Twilight Zone, Maverick, Dr. Kildare, and The Wild Wild West. Married to novelist Elizabeth Cooper, Clancy Cooper died of a heart attack while driving in Hollywood.