Trivia: American actor/singer Bing Crosby acquired his nickname as a child in Washington state. As the legend goes, little Harry Lillis Crosby's favorite comic strip was "The Bingville Bugle," in which the leading character was called Bingo. Hence, the boy was "Bingo" Crosby, with the "O" dropping off as he got older. A restless youth, Crosby tried studying law at Gonzaga University, but spent more time as a drummer and singer in a Spokane band. He and his pal Al Rinker worked up a musical act, and were later joined by Harry Barris. As the Rhythm Boys, the three young entertainers were hired by bandleader Paul Whiteman, who featured them in his nightclub appearances and his film debut, The King of Jazz (1930). Crosby managed to score on radio in 1931, and a series of two-reel comedies made for Mack Sennett helped him launch a screen career; his starring feature debut was in 1932's The Big Broadcast. During this period, he married singer Dixie Lee, with whom he had sons Gary, Dennis, Philip and Lindsay. As one of Paramount's most popular stars of the '30s, and with his carefully cultivated image of an easygoing, golf-happy, regular guy, generous contributor to charities, devoted husband, father, and friend, Crosby became an icon of American values. In 1940, he made the first of several appearances with his golfing buddy Bob Hope, ultimately resulting in seven "Road" pictures which, thanks to the stars' laid-back improvisational style, seem as fresh today as they did at the time. Another milestone occurred in 1944, when director Leo McCarey asked Crosby to play a priest in an upcoming film. Crosby, a devout Catholic, at first refused on the grounds that it would be in bad taste. But McCarey persisted, and Crosby ended up winning an Oscar for his performance in Going My Way (1944). He ushered in a new technological era a few years later when he signed a contract to appear on a weekly ABC variety show provided that it not be live, but tape recorded -- a first for network radio -- so that Crosby could spend more time on the golf course. With the death of his wife Dixie in 1952, the devastated entertainer dropped out of the movie business for a full year; but his life took an upswing when he married young actress Kathryn Grant in 1957. His film roles were few in the '60s, but Crosby was a television fixture during those years, and could be counted on each Yuletide to appear on just about everyone's program singing his signature holiday tune, "White Christmas." Burdened by life-threatening illnesses in the mid-'70s, the singer nonetheless embarked on concert tours throughout the world, surviving even a dangerous fall into an orchestra pit. Crosby died from a heart attack in 1977, shortly after he had finished the 18th hole on a Spanish golf course.

Trivia: A recording artist from age 14, 1950s teen-idol Fabian rose to stardom with such Doc Pomus/ Mort Shuman compositions as "Hound Dog Man" and "Turn Me Loose." Fabian functioned best under the careful tutelage of Bandstand producer Dick Clark and with the benefit of the songwriting input of Pomus and Shuman. Many of his earliest film appearances (North to Alaska [1960], Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation [1962]) indicated that Fabian could be an appealing screen personality with the proper guidance. His popularity suffered a severe setback when he guest-starred as a psychopathic killer on the 1961 TV series Bus Stop; the episode, "A Lion is in the Streets," was considered so reprehensibly violent that it prompted a congressional investigation. While he continued to make records and film appearances, Fabian's career peaked in the early 1960s and went downhill thereafter. Billing himself as Fabian Forte from 1970 onward, the singer/actor has continued to work in cheap horror films and cycle flicks, and has made a few moderately successful TV guest appearances.

Trivia: Trained as a dancer, French actress Nicole Maurey entered films as an actress during the Occupation years, beginning with 1943's Blondine. Maurey gained international prominence as the embattled heroine of Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1950). Her first English-language film was the 1953 Bing Crosby vehicle Little Boy Lost (1953). During her busiest movie years (1955-62), Maurey shuttled between Europe and England; her most famous film in the latter country was the 1962 sci-fier Day of the Triffids. Nicole Maurey's last film to date was 1981's Chanel Solitaire.

Trivia: A leading teen ingénue of the 1950s and 1960s, Tuesday Weld later emerged as one of the more intriguing actresses in Hollywood, delivering a string of well-received performances in the kinds of offbeat and idiosyncratic projects rarely visited by performers of her beauty and glamour. Born Susan Weld August 27, 1943, in New York City, the name "Tuesday" was an extension of a girlhood nickname, "Tu-Tu." She began working as a child model at age four to help support her family after the death of her father, quickly moving from mail-order catalogues to television commercials. She made her film debut in 1963's Rock, Rock, Rock before understudying in Broadway's 1957 production of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Upon signing a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox, Weld was labeled by the press as "Fox's answer to Sandra Dee," but after just one film, 1959's Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!, the studio dropped her.Weld shot to prominence through her work in the television comedy The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which premiered in 1959. That same year she appeared on the silver screen opposite Danny Kaye in The Five Pennies, followed in 1960 by the campus drama Because They're Young. Also in 1960, Weld began appearing under schlockmeister Albert Zugsmith, first in Sex Kittens Go to College and later in the following year's The Private Lives of Adam and Eve. Successive roles in Return to Peyton Place and the Elvis Presley vehicle Wild in the Country further crippled her attempts to mount a serious acting career, although her turn in the 1962 Frank Tashlin comedy Bachelor Flat showed signs of life. Weld then turned down the seemingly tailor-made title role in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita in order to study her craft at the Actors' Studio, and after holding her own opposite Steve McQueen and Jackie Gleason in 1963's Soldier in the Rain, she announced she would no longer accept teenage roles.However, teen roles were all that continued to come Weld's way, and after a two-year absence from the screen she resurfaced in 1965's I'll Take Sweden as the young daughter of star Bob Hope. She followed with an appearance in the McQueen gambling drama The Cincinnati Kid, and in 1966 delivered her strongest performance to date in George Axelrod's little-seen satiric gem Lord Love a Duck. That same year Weld married, later giving birth to her first child. Motherhood brought a temporary halt to her career, forcing her to turn down plum assignments including Bonnie and Clyde, Cactus Flower, True Grit, and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. She returned to work in 1968's Pretty Poison, again earning strong critical notices, but after 1970's I Walk the Line, it was reported that she had moved to Britain and retired from film.The move was not permanent, for in 1971 Weld appeared in her friend Henry Jaglom's A Safe Place. After 1972's Play It As It Lays, she returned to television work, starring in the TV films Reflections of Murder and F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood. In 1977, Weld appeared in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a year later she starred in Who'll Stop the Rain? From 1980 to 1985, Weld was married to Dudley Moore, a period during which she appeared in Michael Mann's 1981 thriller Thief and Sergio Leone's 1984 classic Once Upon a Time in America. In the latter half of the decade, however, she appeared more infrequently before the camera, with only a pair of TV-movie credits, 1986's Something in Common and Circle of Violence: A Family Drama, and a lead role in the 1988 feature Heartbreak Hotel. In the 1990s, Tuesday Weld sightings were even more rare, including only 1991's Mistress, 1993's Falling Down, and 1996's Feeling Minnesota.

Trivia: Actor Richard Beymer has been working steadily on television and in feature films for over four decades. Born in Avoca, IA, Beymer first went before cameras on a Los Angeles children's show at the age of 12, and two years later made his feature-film debut in Vittorio De Sica's Stazione Termini (Indiscretion of an American Wife) (1953). After appearing in several more films during the '50s, with only two major performances in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and West Side Story (1961), Beymer had a significant role in The Longest Day (1962), sharing the film's unforgettable last scene with Richard Burton. Beymer enrolled in New York's Actor's Studio in 1963, but subsequently became an active participant in the struggle to allow African-Americans to register for the vote in Mississippi; during his time down South, he also helped to make a prize-winning documentary of the event. In 1974, Beymer directed his first feature film, The Innerview, an avant-garde effort he distributed to various international film festivals. During the '80s, Beymer became a supporting actor and is best remembered for his regular role as Benjamin Horne on David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks.

Trivia: American actress Yvonne Craig trained for a ballet career from age 10 onward. While in high school, Yvonne was accepted by George Balanchine for the School of American Ballet, but she chose instead to tour with the Ballet Russe. Stopping over in Los Angeles, Ms. Craig was approached by a producer asking if she'd like to be in movies. She turned him down, but was more responsive to Hollywood after she later broke her contract with the Ballet Russe. Yvonne's first film was The Young Land (1957), but it remained on the shelf for two years, thus Eighteen and Anxious (1957) was the moviegoers' first introduction to the actress. The Young Land earned Yvonne a contract with Columbia pictures, where because of her exotic looks and flowing black hair she was cast in teen-aged "femme fatale" roles, such as the seductress in The Gene Krupa Story (1960) (though quite thin, she was actually larger than her frail Krupa co-star Sal Mineo, which caused a minor crisis when the script called for Mineo to hold Yvonne in his arms). Amidst movie assignments of off-and-on quality, Yvonne tested for West Side Story, but lost out to Natalie Wood. She did, however, hold the distinction of appearing with Elvis Presley twice in It Happened at the World's Fair (1962) and Kissin' Cousins (1964). In 1967, Yvonne was called upon to replace an incapacitated Mary Ann Mobley as Batgirl (aka Barbara Gordon) on the once-popular TV series Batman. Ms. Craig did her best in a sketchily written part, and was proud of the fact that she handled her motorcycle-riding scenes without a double, but Batman was on its last legs, and was cancelled in early 1968. When acting roles became repetitive--and few and far between--Yvonne drifted out of show business, making her last film in 1971. She co-produced industrial shows for a time, then went into the real estate business, where she did quite well for herself. Though she did appear (at the producer's request) in a low-budget video film in 1991, Yvonne Craig elected not to play the Hollywood Game anymore, and was content to limit her public appearance to film-fan conventions and Batman retrospectives. In 2009, she returned to show business, voicing a character in the animated Olivia series. Craig died in 2015, at age 78.

Trivia: American actor Kenneth MacKenna (born Leo Mielziner in Canterbury, NH) got his start on the stage in 1919. During the late '20s, he began playing leads in a number of silent films and continued through the early '30s, after which, he returned to the stage. Later, he went back to cinema to become a script editor. MacKenna became a character actor in films of the 1960s. His brother, Jo Mielziner, was a well-known stage designer.

Trivia: Best remembered for his high-profile acting roles on two 1970s television sitcoms -- that of genial news writer Murray Slaughter on CBS's The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977) and that of sweet-natured Captain Merrill Stubing on ABC's The Love Boat (1977-1986), stage-trained actor Gavin MacLeod in fact began his career typecast as a villain. He landed parts in Hollywood features including The Sand Pebbles (1966), Deathwatch (1966), and The Comic (1969), and enjoyed a tenure as Joseph "Happy" Haines on the sitcom McHale's Navy from 1962 through 1964. After The Love Boat permanently laid anchor in the mid-'80s, MacLeod signed on as a spokesperson and pitchman for Princess Cruises and returned to regional theatrical work. He also tackled guest spots on programs including Touched by an Angel and (in a move that surprised everyone) the HBO prison drama Oz. Off-camera, MacLeod is an outspoken born-again Christian. He hosted a popular talk show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, along with his wife, Patti (whom he divorced in 1982 and remarried three years later), called Back on Course, and personally funded many of the Greatest Adventure Stories from the Bible animated videos for children.

Trivia: Frank Scannell, a pug-nosed American character actor, made his film debut in Shadow of Suspicion (1944). Scannell spent the next two decades playing waiters, reporters, bell captains, and other such uniformed roles. One of his larger assignments was Sheriff Quinn in The Night the World Exploded (1957). Jerry Lewis fans will remember Frank Scanell as put-upon hospital patient Mr. Mealey ("I didn't know your teeth were in the glass") in The Disorderly Orderly (1964).

Trivia: Silver-tongued actor Douglas Dumbrille played just about every type in his long screen career, but it was as a dignified villain that he is best remembered. Born in Canada, Dumbrille did most of his stage work in the United States, breaking into films with His Woman in 1931. He bounced between supporting parts and unbilled bits in the early 1930s, usually at Warner Bros., where his sleek brand of skullduggery fit right in with the gangsters, shysters and political phonies popping up in most of the studio's 1930s product. Superb in modern dress roles, Dumbrille also excelled at costume villainy: it is claimed that, in Lives of the Bengal Lancers (1935), he was the first bad guy to growl, "We have ways of making you talk." The actor's pompous demeanor made him an ideal foil for such comedians as the Marx Brothers, with whom he appeared twice, and Abbott and Costello, who matched wits with Dumbrille in four different films. Sometimes, Dumbrille's reputation as a no-good was used to lead the audience astray; he was frequently cast as red-herring suspects in such murder mysteries as Castle in the Desert (1942), while in the Johnny Mack Brown western Flame of the West (1945), Dumbrille piqued the viewer's interest by playing a thoroughly honest, decent sheriff (surely he'd turn bad by the end, thought the audience -- but he didn't). In real life a gentle man whose diabolical features were softened by a pair of spectacles, Dumbrille mellowed his image as he grew older, often playing bemused officials and judges who couldn't make head nor tails of Gracie Allen's thought patterns on TV's The Burns and Allen Show. Late in life, a widowed Douglas Dumbrille married Patricia Mobray, daughter of his close friend -- and fellow screen villain -- Alan Mowbray.