Trivia: Though born in Michigan, Adele Mara exuded enough exotic Latin charm to be hired as a vocalist by bandleader Xavier Cugat. In 1941, she was signed to a Columbia Pictures contract, appearing in large roles and small in everything from 2-reel comedies to "B" features like Alias Boston Blackie (1941). She became a star at Republic Studios in the mid-1940s, appearing in many a Republic musical and melodrama and adorning lockers all over the world in cheesecake pin-ups; among her last assignments at Republic was the big-budget 1949 war epic Sands of Iwo Jima. In the late 1950s, Adele Mara curtailed her screen activities upon her marriage to TV producer Roy Huggins.

Trivia: The son of actress Nan Kelly Yorke, Jack Kelly was the younger brother of stage and film star Nancy Kelly. Like Nancy, Jack was a professional from an early age, acting in radio and on stage before the age of 10, and in films from 1937 (he is quite prominent in a brace of 1939 20th Century-Fox films, Young Mr. Lincoln and The Story of Alexander Graham Bell). He reemerged as a leading man in the early 1950s, appearing in such films as Forbidden Planet (1956, as the ill-fated Lieutenant Farnam). Signed by Warner Bros. in 1955, Kelly starred as Dr. Paris Mitchell in the weekly TV version of the 1942 film King's Row. He went on to play gamblin' man Bart Maverick on the longer-running Warners western series Maverick. Though his popularity never matched that of his co-star James Garner, Kelly still developed a fan following as Bart; he remained with the series from 1957 until its cancellation in 1962, appearing opposite such Garner successors as Roger Moore and Robert Colbert. Kelly dabbled in a little bit of everything after that: hosting the anthology series NBC Comedy Playhouse (1973), emceeing the game show Sale of the Century (1969-71), and playing hard-nosed Lt. Ryan on the Teresa Graves series Get Christie Love (1974) and Harry Hammond on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (1977-79). He revived the Bart Maverick character on 1978's The New Maverick and the 1990 TV movie The Gambler Returns: Luck of the Draw. Chances are that, had he lived, Jack Kelly would have been invited to co-star again with Garner in the 1994 Mel Gibson theatrical-feature version of Maverick.

Trivia: American actor Jay Novello began his film career with Tenth Avenue Kid (1938). Small, wiry and mustachioed, Novello found a home in Hollywood playing shifty street characters and petty thieves; during the war he displayed a friendlier image as a Latin-American type, appearing as waiters and hotel clerks in innumerable Good Neighbor films set south of the border. Once the war was over, it was back to those scraggly little characters, even in such period pieces as The Robe (1953), in which Novello played the unsavory slave dealer who sold Victor Mature to Richard Burton. Adept in TV comedy roles as meek milquetoasts and henpecked husbands, Novello was a particular favorite of Lucille Ball, who used the actor prominently in both I Love Lucy (first as the man duped by the "Ethel to Tillie" seance, then as a gondolier in a later episode) and The Lucy Show (as a softhearted safecracker). Jay Novello remained active in films into the '60s, as scurrilous as ever in such fantasy films as The Lost World (1960) and Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961); he also stayed busy in such TV programs as The Mothers in Law, My Three Sons and McHale's Navy, playing a recurring role in the latter series as a resourceful Italian mayor.

Trivia: American actor Morris Ankrum graduated from the University of Southern California with a law degree, then went on to an associate professorship in economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Here he founded a collegiate little theatre, eventually turning his hobby into a vocation as a teacher and director at the Pasadena Playhouse. (He was much admired by his students, including such future luminaries as Robert Preston and Raymond Burr.) Having already changed his name from Nussbaum to Ankrum for professional reasons, Ankrum was compelled to undergo another name change when he signed a Paramount Pictures contract in the 1930s; in his first films, he was billing as Stephen Morris. Reverting to Morris Ankrum in 1939, the sharp-featured, heavily eyebrowed actor flourished in strong character roles, usually of a villainous nature, throughout the 1940s. By the 1950s, Ankrum had more or less settled into "authority" roles in science-fiction films and TV programs. Among his best known credits in this genre were Rocketship X-M (1950), Red Planet Mars (1952), Flight to Mars (1952), Invaders From Mars (1953) (do we detect a subtle pattern here?), Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and From the Earth to the Moon (1958). The fact that Morris Ankrum played innumerable Army generals was fondly invoked in director Joe Dante's 1993 comedy Matinee: the military officer played by Kevin McCarthy in the film-within-a-film Mant is named General Ankrum.

Trivia: Dropping the "Cooper" in his name to avoid confusion with bit player Edward Cooper, British actor Edward Ashley was a seven-year film veteran when he came to America in 1940. His first Hollywood picture, and for many years his best, was MGM's Pride and Prejudice (1940). Ashley was but one of many handsome Englishmen wandering around the MGM lot, so the studio used him in anything that came along. He was afforded a rare star-billing credit in the "Passing Parade" short subject Strange Testament (1941), in which he played a New Orleans millionaire who left a monetary legacy to all Louisiana newlyweds as compensation for betraying his own true love. Freelancing by the late 1940s, Ashley appeared in several second leads and character parts such as the Commissioner in the Mexican-filmed Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948). Banking on his resemblance to Errol Flynn, Ashley played the Fox, a Robin Hood type, in The Court Jester (1956), but most of the derring-do went to the film's true star, Danny Kaye (who impersonated the Fox). Edward Ashley remained a journeyman actor into the 1970s, appearing with dignity if not distinction in such films as Herbie Rides Again (1973) and Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976).

Trivia: Looking for all the world like a beardless Rumpelstiltskin, actor Raymond Hatton utilized his offbeat facial features and gift for mimicry in vaudeville, where he appeared from the age of 12 onward. In films from 1914, Hatton was starred or co-starred in several of the early Cecil B. DeMille productions, notably The Whispering Chorus (1917), in which the actor delivered a bravura performance as a man arrested for murdering himself. Though he played a vast array of characters in the late teens and early 1920s, by 1926 Hatton had settled into rubeish character roles. He was teamed with Wallace Beery in several popular Paramount comedies of the late silent era, notably Behind the Front (1926) and Now We're in the Air (1927). Curiously, while Beery's career skyrocketed in the 1930s, Hatton's stardom diminished, though he was every bit as talented as his former partner. In the 1930s and 1940s, Hatton showed up as comic sidekick to such western stars as Johnny Mack Brown and Bob Livingston. He was usually cast as a grizzled old desert rat, even when (as in the case of the "Rough Riders" series with Buck Jones and Tim McCoy) he happened to be younger than the nominal leading man. Raymond Hatton continued to act into the 1960s, showing up on such TV series as The Abbott and Costello Show and Superman and in several American-International quickies. Raymond Hatton's last screen appearance was as the old man collecting bottles along the highway in Richard Brooks' In Cold Blood (1967).

Trivia: A genuine westerner, Lane Chandler, upon leaving Montana Wesleyan College, moved to LA and worked as a garage mechanic while seeking out film roles. After several years in bit parts, Chandler was signed by Paramount in 1927 as a potential western star. For a brief period, both Chandler and Gary Cooper vied for the best cowboy roles, but in the end Paramount went with Cooper. Chandler made several attempts to establish himself as a "B" western star in the 1930s, but his harsh voice and sneering demeanor made him a better candidate for villainous roles. He mostly played bits in the 1940s, often as a utility actor for director Cecil B. DeMille. The weather-beaten face and stubbly chin of Lane Chandler popped up in many a TV and movie western of the 1950s, his roles gradually increasing in size and substance towards the end of his career.

Trivia: Dark-eyed, exotic American actress Belle Mitchell first appeared on screen in 1928. A Theda Bara type at a time when that type was passe, Mitchell paid her bills with a series of featured roles. She was seen as Mexicans, Native Americans, Middle Easterners and Gypsies; she was most frequently cast as a maid, medium or fortune teller. Belle Mitchell was 86 when she made her last screen appearance in 1973's Soylent Green.