Trivia: As a child, American actress Betty Hutton, born Elizabeth Thornburg in 1921, sang on street corners to help support her family after her father died. She was singing with bands by the time she was 13, eventually becoming the vocalist for the Vincent Lopez orchestra. Because of her exuberance and energy, she became known as "The Blonde Bombshell." She debuted on Broadway in Two for the Show in 1940, then in 1941, signed a film contract with Paramount. Hutton debuted onscreen in The Fleet's In (1942), and for the next decade appeared in tailor-made comedic roles and occasional dramatic roles. She sabotaged her own career in 1952, however, when she demanded that her husband (choreographer Charles O'Curran) direct her films; the studio refused and she walked out on her contract, after which she appeared in only one more film. Over the next 15 years, she worked occasionally onstage and in nightclubs, and co-starred on Broadway in Fade In Fade Out in 1965. Her career going nowhere, she attempted suicide in 1972; a friendly priest helped her find work in a Catholic rectory, and eventually she enrolled in college and earned a Master's degree. She went on to teach acting at two New England colleges. Hutton died in Palm Springs, CA, in early March 2007, at age 86. Her sister is actress Marion Thornburg.

Trivia: Born in Illinois, Howard Keel was raised in California by his widowed mother. Here he supported himself with odd jobs after high-school graduation, vaguely holding out hopes of becoming a professional singer. His first gig was as a singing busboy at a Los Angeles cafe for the princely wage of $15 per week. Temporarily discouraged, Keel took a job at Douglas Aircraft; the executive staff, impressed by Keel's movie-star looks and pleasant baritone, sent the young man out on a tour of Douglas' other plants, where as a "manufacturing representative" he entertained the workers while they hastened to meet their wartime quotas. After winning several singing contests, Keel was hired by Rodgers and Hammerstein; he replaced John Raitt in the Broadway production of Carousel and played Curley in the London staging of Oklahoma. It was while in England that Keel, billed as Harold Keel, made his film debut in a villainous role in The Small Voice (1949). He was brought back to Hollywood to play Frank Butler in MGM's filmization of Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun. This led to leading roles in such subsequent big-budget MGM musicals as Showboat (1951), Lovely to Look At (1952), Kiss Me Kate (1953), Rose Marie (1954), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Kismet (1955) and Jupiter's Darling (1955). Ever on the lookout for a straight, nonsinging role, Keel was occasionally satisfied with such films as Callaway Went Thataway (1951) (in which he essayed a dual role), Desperate Search (1953) and The Big Fisherman (1959). After parting company with MGM, Keel appeared in nightclub and touring companies, often in the company of his frequent MGM co-star Kathryn Grayson, and also starred in several medium-budget westerns; he also was cast in the British sci-fi classic Day of the Triffids (1963). Howard Keel's most recent on-camera credit was the sizeable supporting role of Clayton Farrow on the TV series Dallas.

Trivia: Actor Keenan Wynn was the son of legendary comedian Ed Wynn and actress Hilda Keenan, and grandson of stage luminary Frank Keenan. After attending St. John's Military Academy, Wynn obtained his few professional theatrical jobs with the Maine Stock Company. After overcoming the "Ed Wynn's Son" onus (his father arranged his first job, with the understanding that Keenan would be on his own after that), Wynn developed into a fine comic and dramatic actor on his own in several Broadway plays and on radio. He was signed to an MGM contract in 1942, scoring a personal and professional success as the sarcastic sergeant in 1944's See Here Private Hargrove (1944). Wynn's newfound popularity as a supporting actor aroused a bit of jealousy from his father, who underwent professional doldrums in the 1940s; father and son grew closer in the 1950s when Ed, launching a second career as a dramatic actor, often turned to his son for moral support and professional advice. Wynn's film career flourished into the 1960s and 1970s, during which time he frequently appeared in such Disney films as The Absent-Minded Professor (1960) and The Love Bug (1968) as apoplectic villain Alonso Hawk. Wynn also starred in such TV series as Troubleshooters and Dallas. Encroaching deafness and a drinking problem plagued Wynn in his final years, but he always delivered the goods onscreen. Wynn was the father of writer/director Tracy Keenan Wynn and writer/actor Edmund Keenan (Ned) Wynn.

Trivia: Born in New York City, Louis Calhern moved to St. Louis with his family as a child. There he played high-school football, and while engaged in gridiron activity he was spotted by a theatrical manager and hired as a supernumerary in a local stage troupe. Borrowing money from his father, Calhern headed to New York to pursue acting. Because World War I was going on at the time, the young actor thought it expedient to change his Teutonic given name of Carl Henry Vogt ("Calhern" was a rearrangement of the letters in his first and second names). After his first Broadway break in the 1923 George M. Cohan production Song and Dance Man, the tall, velvet-voiced Calhern became a matinee idol by virtue of a play titled The Cobra. In films from 1921, Calhern thrived in the early talkie era as a cultured, saturnine villain. For a time, Calhern battled alcoholism and lost several important stage and screen assignments because of his personal problems, but by the late 1940s, Calhern had gone cold turkey and completely cleaned up his act. He was brilliant as Oliver Wendell Holmes in both the Broadway and film versions of The Magnificent Yankee, and from 1950 onward made several well-reviewed appearances as Shakespeare's King Lear (his favorite role). An MGM contract player throughout the 1950s, Calhern was seen as Buffalo Bill in Annie Get Your Gun (1950), the above-suspicion criminal mastermind (and "uncle" of kept woman Marilyn Monroe) in The Asphalt Jungle (1950), and the title character in Julius Caesar (1953). Louis Calhern died of a sudden heart attack while filming The Teahouse of the August Moon in Japan; he was replaced by character actor Paul Ford.

Trivia: Though descended from a highly respected family of Irish politicians and civil servants, actor J. Carroll Naish played every sort of nationality except Irish during his long career. Naish joined the Navy at age sixteen, and spent the next decade travelling all over the world, absorbing the languages, dialects and customs of several nations. Drifting from job to job while stranded in California, Naish began picking up extra work in Hollywood films. The acting bug took hold, and Naish made his stage debut in a 1926 touring company of The Shanghai Gesture. Within five years he was a well-established member of the theatrical community (the legendary actress Mrs. Leslie Carter was the godmother of Naish's daughter). Naish thrived during the early days of talking pictures thanks to his expertise in a limitless variety of foreign dialects. At various times he was seen as Chinese, Japanese, a Frenchman, a South Seas Islander, Portuguese, an Italian, a German, and a Native American (he played Sitting Bull in the 1954 film of the same name). Many of his assignments were villainous in nature (he was a gangster boss in virtually every Paramount "B" of the late 1930s), though his two Oscar nominations were for sympathetic roles: the tragic Italian POW in Sahara (1943) and the indigent Mexican father of a deceased war hero in A Medal For Benny (1954). Naish continued to flourish on radio and television, at one point playing both a priest and a rabbi on the same anthology series. He starred in both the radio and TV versions of the melting-pot sitcom "Life with Luigi," essayed the title role in 39 episodes of "The New Adventures of Charlie Chan" (1957), and played a comedy Indian on the 1960 sitcom "Guestward Ho." Illness forced him to retire in 1969, but J. Carroll Naish was cajoled back before the cameras by quickie producer Al Adamson for the 1970 ultracheapie Dracula vs. Frankenstein; even weighed down by bad false teeth, coke-bottle glasses and a wheelchair, Naish managed to act the rest of the cast right off the screen.

Trivia: Hearty American character actor Edward Arnold was born in New York to German immigrant parents. Orphaned at 11, Arnold supported himself with a series of manual labor jobs. He made his first stage appearance at 12, playing Lorenzo in an amateur production of The Merchant of Venice at the East Side Settlement House. Encouraged to continue acting by playwright/ journalist John D. Barry, Arnold became a professional at 15, joining the prestigious Ben Greet Players shortly afterward. After touring with such notables as Ethel Barrymore and Maxine Elliot, he did bit and extra work at Chicago's Essanay Film Studios and New Jersey's World Studios during the early 'teens. Hoping to become a slender leading man, Arnold found that his fortune lay in character parts, and accordingly beefed up his body: "The bigger I got, the better character roles I received," he'd observe later. Following several seasons on Broadway, Arnold made his talking picture debut as a gangster in 1933's Whistling in the Dark. He continued playing supporting villains until attaining the title role in Diamond Jim (1935), which required him to add 25 pounds to his already substantial frame; he repeated this characterization in the 1940 biopic Lillian Russell. Other starring roles followed in films like Sutter's Gold (1936), Come and Get It (1936) and Toast of New York (1937), but in 1937 Arnold's career momentum halted briefly when he was labelled "box office poison" by a committee of film exhibitors (other "poisonous" performers were Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn!) Undaunted, Arnold accepted lesser billing in secondary roles, remaining in demand until his death. A favorite of director Frank Capra (who frequently chided the actor for the "phony laugh" that was his trademark), Arnold appeared in a trio of Capra films, playing Jimmy Stewart's millionaire father in You Can't Take It With You (1938), a corrupt political boss in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and a would-be fascist in Meet John Doe (1941). Despite the fact that he was not considered a box-office draw, Arnold continued to be cast in starring roles from time to time, notably Daniel Webster in 1941's The Devil and Daniel Webster and blind detective Duncan Maclain in Eyes in the Night (1942) and The Hidden Eye (1945). During the 1940s, Arnold became increasingly active in politics, carrying this interest over into a radio anthology, Mr. President, which ran from 1947 through 1953. He was co-founder of the "I Am an American Foundation," an officer of Hollywood's Permanent Charities Committee, and a president of the Screen Actors Guild. Though a staunch right-wing conservative (he once considered running for Senate on the Republican ticket), Arnold labored long and hard to protect his fellow actors from the persecution of the HUAC "communist witch-hunt." Edward Arnold's last film appearance was in the "torn from today's headlines" potboiler Miami Expose (1956).

Trivia: Singer and actress Venuta Benay appeared in a few films during the late '40s and early '50s; she made her film debut in the silent Trail of '98 (1928). A native of San Francisco, she learned to dance in adolescence. After 1957, Benay primarily focused upon her theatrical career. She did occasionally return to film work up through the early '90s.

Trivia: A former teacher, American actor Clinton Sundberg realized from the moment he set foot on stage that he'd never be a romantic lead, but settled -- profitably, as it turned out -- for character work. Sundberg's prim demeanor and light, throaty voice enabled him to carve a significant Hollywood niche as desk clerks and minor bureaucrats, though he was capable of coarse villainy, as proven in Undercover Maisie (1949). The actor worked most often at MGM throughout his career, from 1946's Undercurrent to 1963's How the West Was Won. Probably the closest he got to a full lead was as corpulent private eye J. Scott Smart's "Man Friday" in the enjoyable Universal low-budget mystery The Fat Man (1951). Clinton Sundberg contributed numerous voice-overs to commercials of the '70s, and was seen to good advantage in one advertisement as an unflappable tailor outfitting a large, talking Seven-Up bottle!

Trivia: Native American actor Chief Yowlachie (pronounced "Yo-latchee") spent many years on stage as an opera singer, performing under his given name of Daniel Simmons. His film career began in the mid-1920s with feathered-headdress bits in such productions as Ella Cinders (1925). Though well into middle age when he started showing up on screen, he was youthful-looking enough to play fierce Indian warriors and renegades well into the 1930s. His larger roles include the nominal villain in Ken Maynard's Red Raiders (1928), Billy Jackrabbit in the 1930 version of Girl of the Golden West (1930) and Geronimo in Son of Geronimo. After years of portraying noble, taciturn characters with names like Running Deer, Yellow Feather, Long Arrow, Little Horse and Black Eagle, Chief Yowlachie let his hair down in the role of "Chief Hi-Octane" in the Bowery Boys' Bowery Buckaroos (1948).

Trivia: A dignified if somewhat corpulent British stage veteran, Evelyn Beresford joined the large British contingency in Hollywood during World War II. Usually cast as rather grand dowagers, Beresford was a virtual dead ringer for the aged Queen Victoria, whom she portrayed twice, in Buffalo Bill (1944) and Annie Get Your Gun (1950).

Trivia: A distinguished stage and screen actor from Austria (born Johan Mylong-Münz), John Mylong was one in a score of European actors cast as Middle European types in Hollywood wartime melodramas. In the U.S. from 1941, when he starred in the New York Theatre Guild's production of Somewhere in France, Mylong later played Colonel Duval in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), the duplicitous General Halder in The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler (1943), Von Bülow in Hotel Berlin (1945), and Kaiser Wilhelm in Annie Get Your Gun (1950). Equally busy on television, Mylong played the casino manager in the "Lucy Goes to Monte Carlo" episode of I Love Lucy and also appeared on Black Saddle and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Trivia: Virtually every account of actor John Phillip Law's career included an early screen credit in The Magnificent Yankee, filmed when Law was 13. This "fact" has never been adequately confirmed; Law himself traced his involvement in acting to his amateur-theatrical days at the University of Hawaii. After working with New York's Lincoln City repertory, Law officially launched his film career in Europe. He made his Hollywood bow as a boyish, gangling Soviet sailor in The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming (1966). Later highlights of Law's extensive film work include the role of blind "guardian angel" Pygar in the kinky Jane Fonda vehicle Barbarella (1968), German air ace Baron Von Richtofen in Roger Corman's Von Richtofen and Brown (1970), and the title role in the Ray Harryhausen FX-fest The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973). John Phillip Law's infrequent TV work also included a mid-1980s stint on the CBS daytimer Young and the Restless. He died of undisclosed causes at age 70, in the spring of 2008.

Trivia: Born and educated in Pennsylvania, John Hamilton headed to New York in his twenties to launch a 25-year stage career. Ideally cast as businessmen and officials, the silver-haired Hamilton worked opposite such luminaries as George M. Cohan and Ann Harding. He toured in the original company of the long-running Frank Bacon vehicle Lightnin', and also figured prominently in the original New York productions of Seventh Heaven and Broadway. He made his film bow in 1930, costarring with Donald Meek in a series of 2-reel S.S.Van Dyne whodunits (The Skull Mystery, The Wall St. Mystery) filmed at Vitaphone's Brooklyn studios. Vitaphone's parent company, Warner Bros., brought Hamilton to Hollywood in 1936, where he spent the next twenty years playing bits and supporting roles as police chiefs, judges, senators, generals and other authority figures. Humphrey Bogart fans will remember Hamilton as the clipped-speech DA in The Maltese Falcon (1941), while Jimmy Cagney devotees will recall Hamilton as the recruiting officer who inspires George M. Cohan (Cagney) to compose "Over There" in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Continuing to accept small roles in films until the mid '50s (he was the justice of the peace who marries Marlon Brando to Teresa Wright in 1950's The Men), Hamilton also supplemented his income with a group of advertisements for an eyeglasses firm. John Hamilton is best known to TV-addicted baby boomers for his six-year stint as blustering editor Perry "Great Caesar's Ghost!" White on the Adventures of Superman series.

Trivia: Despite his less than masculine moniker, Carol Henry was a tough-looking hombre who appeared in countless B-Westerns and quite a few serials of the 1940s. Often cast as a henchman, Henry could also play stage drivers, townsmen, or even, as in Three Desperate Men (1951), a lawman. When B-Westerns bit the dust in the early '50s, Henry went into television, where he appeared on such popular shows as The Cisco Kid, Wild Bill Hickock, Wagon Train, and Cimarron Strip. He retired in the late 1960s.

Trivia: American actor/playwright Nolan Leary made his stage debut in 1911; 60 years later, he was still appearing in small film and TV roles. From 1943 onward, Leary showed up in some 150 movies, mostly in bit roles. One of his juicier screen assignments was as the deaf-mute father of Lon Chaney James Cagney in Man of 1000 Faces (1958). In 1974, Nolan Leary showed up briefly as Ted Baxter's prodigal father on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Trivia: A tough-looking bit player onscreen from the late '30s, Al Rhein (real name: Alexander Rhein) often played professional gamblers, croupiers, and various thugs.

Trivia: Often sporting a pencil-thin mustache, Carl Sepulveda was one of the many anonymous stunt riders found in the background of countless B-Westerns and serials. Having made a couple of screen appearances in the late silent era, Sepulveda returned to films full time in 1939, appearing mostly unbilled in more than 50 Westerns and at least eight serials until 1951. He also worked on the first season of television's Gene Autry Show (1950-1956).

Trivia: The son of veteran vaudeville headliner Julius Tannen and the brother of actor Charles Tannen, William Tannen entered films as a Columbia contractee in 1934. Along with several other young stage-trained performers, Tannen was "discovered" by MGM in 1938's Dramatic School. During his subsequent years at MGM, he was briefly associated with three top comedy teams: He played Virginia Grey's brother in the Marx Brothers' The Big Store (1941), a Nazi flunkey in Laurel and Hardy's Air Raid Wardens (1943), and a "hard-boiled" assistant director in Abbott and Costello in Hollywood (1945). On TV, William Tannen was seen in the recurring role of Deputy Hal on the weekly Western Wyatt Earp (1955-1961).