Trivia: Michael Rennie always claimed that he "turned actor" to escape becoming an executive for his family's wool business. The Cambridge-educated Rennie haunted the casting offices until he was hired by Alfred Hitchcock for his first film, The Secret Agent (1936). Handsome but hollow, Rennie decided that if he was to be a film star, he'd better learn to act, thus he spent several seasons with the York Repertory. Serving in World War II as a flying officer in the RAF, Rennie came to the United States for the first time to be a training instructor in Georgia. Small roles in postwar British films led to a 20th Century Fox contract. It was during his stay at Fox that Rennie truly began to blossom with major roles in 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still (as Klaatu), 1952's Les Miserables (as Jean Valjean), 1953's The Robe, and many other films. On television, Michael Rennie spent two years and 76 episodes portraying suave soldier of fortune Harry Lime on the syndicated series The Third Man. Rennie died of emphysema on June 10, 1971.

Trivia: The daughter of actor John Mills and novelist-playwright Mary Hayley Bell and the sister of actress Hayley Mills, she first appeared onscreen as an 11-week-old baby in her father's film In Which We Serve (1942), which was co-directed by her godfather, Noel Coward. Before the age of ten she acted in two more of her father's films. Her first adult role (and lead role) was in No, My Darling Daughter (1961), after which her film work was intermittent; she was rarely onscreen after the mid '70s. Her main focus has been the stage, mostly in London and occasionally on Broadway. She starred in the TV sitcom Nanny and the Professor and starred in a number of TV productions, winning an Emmy for her work in the TV movie QB VII (1975). She is married to actor Maxwell Caulfield, who is 18 years her junior.

Trivia: For about 20 years from the mid-'50s until the mid-'70s, David Frankham was one of the most visible villains and second male leads on television -- and one of the more interesting British actors working in American horror and science fiction movies. Born in Kent, England, in 1926, Frankham studied architecture and served in the Far East as an army draftee for three years in the late '40s. It was while posted in Malaya that he won a contest in which the prize included a brief stint on radio as an announcer; he proved a natural at the microphone and, after an apprenticeship on Radio Malaya, landed a job with the BBC after returning to civilian life. By age 25, he was back in England making a comfortable living as an announcer, news reader, and radio talk-show host; but he also wanted to try his hand at acting and moved to the U.S. in 1955. Frankham landed a role on an NBC drama a few weeks after his arrival, and spent the next few years doing lots of television work, including live dramatic anthology shows and appearances on filmed syndicated series such as Ziv TV's Men Into Space. Frankham landed his first movie role when he was selected to play the principal villain in Edward Bernds' Return of the Fly (1959). This launched him on a career in which he mostly portrayed morally compromised leading characters in movies such as Disney's Ten Who Dared and American International Pictures' Master of the World (in which his character turns upon Charles Bronson -- the hero of the piece -- in betrayal). In addition to his film work, Frankham did some voice acting during this period: In the original 101 Dalmatians (1961), he voiced Sgt. Tibs, and he dubbed many of the voices in William Wyler's Ben-Hur (1959). Although he was born and raised in England, Frankham was able to do a credible American accent, which greatly expanded the roles he could play. He made the rounds of the studios, working in everything from low-budget horror (Tales of Terror [1962]) to big studio productions such as Columbia's King Rat (1965), and remained very active on television in such series as The Gallant Men, Thriller, Twelve O'Clock High, The Beverly Hillbillies, Dr. Kildare, The F.B.I., and The Outer Limits. In the latter -- in one of the creepiest shows ever done on the program -- he had an unusually upright and heroic role as the stubbornly uncorruptable Harvey Kry Jr. in "Don't Open Till Doomsday" (the show with the "box creature"), in which his would-be bride, separated by time and space, ages into the scary Miriam Hopkins. His other memorable appearance was in the third season Star Trek episode "Is There in Truth No Beauty?," playing Lawrence Marvick, a man who is destroyed by his jealousy of an alien visitor (oddly enough, another "box creature," and one so hideous that the mere sight of it drives humans insane). From the early '60s into the '70s, the actor did numerous commercials, though his most lasting public impression came from the work he did on science fiction, horror films and television shows. Frankham quit acting on a regular basis in 1976, though there were periodic roles in the decade that followed, including a stint on a CBS soap opera and appearances in the movies The Great Santini and Wrong Is Right.

Trivia: Street-smart leading actor Harry Guardino entered films in 1952 after several years of knocking around the New York stages. The best of his early film roles was Cary Grant's comic handyman in 1958's Houseboat. Guardino worked extensively in European productions in the 1960s, playing such parts as Barabbas in 1961's King of Kings. Among Harry Guardino's many TV assignments were the title role in the 1964 New York-based series The Reporter and the "Bogart/Bond" hero on the syndicated 1971 weekly Monty Nash. He made his final film appearance in Fist of Honor (1991).