Trivia: His father was a traveling salesman who did a lot of business in Europe, and Wilde spent much of his youth traveling in Europe with him, where he became fluent in several languages. For several years he studied medicine in college, but he gave it up to pursue acting; he also gave up a spot on the 1936 U.S. Olympic fencing team. He appeared in a number of plays in New York and on the road, playing everything from bit parts to leads. In 1940 he was hired as a fencing instructor and a featured player for the Broadway production of Hamlet with Laurence Olivier; some of the rehearsals were in Hollywood, where he landed a film contract. On-screen from 1940, Wilde played small roles as heavies in several films, then switched studios and began getting leads in B movies. His career took off after he played Chopin in A Song to Remember (1945), for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. For several years he starred in major productions, such as the 1952 Best Picture winner The Greatest Show on Earth, then in the mid-late '50s he was back in B movies, often playing swashbucklers. In 1955 he formed his own company, Theodora Productions, to produce, direct, and star in his own films; he ultimately made 11 films in that capacity, but earned little critical respect for his work. Divorced from actress Patricia Knight, Wilde married his frequent costar, actress Jean Wallace.

Trivia: Reed was elected beauty queen of her high school and Campus Queen of her college. The latter honor resulted in her photo making the L.A. papers, and as a result she was invited to take a screen test with MGM, which signed her in 1941. She played supporting roles in a number of minor films (at first being billed as "Donna Adams"), then in the mid '40s she began getting leads; with rare exceptions, she portrayed sincere, wholesome types and loving wives and girlfriends. She went against type playing a prostitute in From Here to Eternity (1953), for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Rarely getting rewarding roles, she retired from the screen in 1958 to star in the TV series "The Donna Reed Show," which was a great success and remained on the air through 1966. After 1960 she appeared in only one more film. In the mid '80s she emerged from retirement to star in "Dallas;" Barbara Bel Geddes returned to the show in 1985, and Reed won a $1 million settlement for a breach of contract suit against the show's producers. She died of cancer several months later.

Trivia: After several years in secondary film roles, the skeletal, menacing Christopher Lee achieved horror-flick stardom as the Monster in 1958's The Curse of Frankenstein, the second of his 21 Hammer Studios films. Contrary to popular belief, Lee and Peter Cushing did not first appear together in The Curse of Frankenstein. In Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), in which Cushing plays the minor role of Osric, Lee appears as the cadaverous candle-bearer in the "frighted with false fires" scene, one of his first film roles. In 1958, Lee made his inaugural appearance as "the Count" in The Horror of Dracula, with Cushing as Van Helsing. It would remain the favorite of Lee's Dracula films; the actor later noted that he was grateful to be allowed to convey "the sadness of the character. The terrible sentence, the doom of immortality...."Three years after Curse, Lee added another legendary figure to his gallery of characters: Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist of Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes. With the release eight years later of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Lee became the first actor ever to portray both Holmes and Holmes' brother, Mycroft, onscreen. Other Lee roles of note include the title characters in 1959's The Mummy and the Fu Manchu series of the '60s, and the villainous Scaramanga in the 1974 James Bond effort The Man With the Golden Gun. In one brilliant casting coup, the actor was co-starred with fellow movie bogeymen Cushing, Vincent Price, and John Carradine in the otherwise unmemorable House of Long Shadows (1982). Established as a legend in his own right, Lee continued working steadily throughout the '80s and '90s, appearing in films ranging from Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) to Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999).In 2001, after appearing in nearly 300 film and television productions and being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the international star with the most screen credits to his name, the 79-year-old actor undertook the role of Saruman, chief of all wizards, in director Peter Jackson's eagerly anticipated screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Thought by many to be the millennial predecessor to George Lucas' Star Wars franchise, audiences thrilled to the wondrous battle between Saruman and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) atop the wizard's ominous tower, though Lee didn't play favorites between the franchises when Lucas shot back with the continuing saga of Anakin Skywalker's journey to the dark side in mid-2002. Wielding a lightsaber against one of the most powerful adversaries in the Star Wars canon, Lee proved that even at 80 he still had what it takes to be a compelling and demanding screen presence. He lent his vocal talents to Tim Burton's Corpse Bride in 2005, and appeared as the father of Willy Wonka in the same director's adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic. He appeared as Count Dooku in Revenge of the Sith, and voiced the part for the animated Clone Wars. He appeared in the quirky British film Burke & Hare in 2010, and the next year he could be seen Martin Scorsese's Hugo. In 2012 he teamed with Tim Burton yet again when he appeared in the big-screen adaptation of Dark Shadows.Now nearly into 90s, Lee returned to Middle Earth in 2012 with Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, appearing in the first (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) and third (The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies) films. He also reprised the role in a number of video games based on the two series. Lee was still actively working when he died in 2015, at age 93.

Trivia: Smooth, refined British star Leo Genn is known for his relaxed charm and "black velvet" voice. Before becoming an actor, he received a law degree at Cambridge and worked as a barrister in the early '20s. In 1930 he debuted onstage; for several years he continued earning money with legal services, meanwhile gaining experience in both plays and films. In 1939 he finally gave up the law to make his Broadway debut. He served with the Royal Artillery during World War II; in 1943 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and in 1945 he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. On several occasions during the war he was granted leave to appear in films. At war's end he became one of Britain's investigators of war crimes at the Belsen concentration camp and went on to be an assistant prosecutor for the Belsen trial. After his small but noteworthy role as the Constable of France in Laurence Olivier's film Henry V (1944), he was invited to the U.S., where he had a great theatrical triumph in the 1946 Broadway production of Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest. His stage and screen career flourished afterwards in both the U.S. and England. Onscreen he was usually cast in smart, likable, subtle character leads and supporting roles. For his portrayal of Gaius Petronius, Nero's counselor, in Quo Vadis (1951), he received a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nomination.

Trivia: Ron Randell was engaged in radio and stage work in his native Australia from his teens. Randell's first leading film role was as a real-life aviation hero in Smithy (1946). In Hollywood, Randell starred as fictional detectives Bulldog Drummond and the Lone Wolf, at the tail end of both of those characters' long-running B-picture series. He spent the 1950s fluctuating between American and British productions; he was featured as Cole Porter in Kiss Me Kate (1958) and starred in the 1957 TV espionage series O.S.S. Ron Randell continued his stage career into the 1990s, going on to join Tony Randall's National Actors Theater.

Trivia: British actor Clive Morton was an employee of the East India Dock Company before deciding to "tread the boards." Morton's old-school-tie personality and men's-club looks served him well in securing numerous film roles as aristocrats or snobbish business executives. Seldom having more than a scene or two in any film (his first was 1932's Fires of Fate, his last was 1974's 11 Harrowhouse), Morton nonetheless made the most of his limited screen time in such quality productions as Scott of the Antarctic (1949), Richard III (1956), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Young Winston (1971). Perhaps as a reward for his long cinema service, Clive Morton was allowed longer scenes and better lines, in his prolific TV work.