Trivia: A Rice Institute graduate, James Craig took his first acting lessons from prominent character player Cyril Delevanti. After taking a few extra jobs, Craig was given a speaking role in 1937's Sophie Lang Goes West. He appeared in the serials Fighting G-Men (1938) and Winners of the West (1940), and showed up in such two-reelers as the Three Stooges'Oil's Well that Ends Well (1939), before landing his first important "A" picture role opposite Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1940). Craig was then showered with critical praise for his portrayal of Jabez Stone, the New Hampshire farmer who sells his soul to the Devil in 1941's All That Money Can Buy (aka The Devil and Daniel Webster). During the war, Craig became an MGM leading man, chiefly by virtue of his resemblance to Clark Gable; his best films during this period include Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945) and a few interesting program westerns. His films declined in importance throughout the 1950s. By the mid-1960s, Craig was of one of several old-timers appearing in the inexpensive Technicolor westerns being produced by A.C. Lyles and Alex Gordon. After retiring from films, James Craig became a successful real estate agent.

Trivia: Usually grouped together in the 1960s with Hollywood's "Beach Boy" set, Keith Larsen was actually more the tennis-playing type. In fact, he was a tennis pro at the time he was tapped by a talent scout to play a small role in 1951's Operation Pacific. While Larsen's film career was negligible, he prospered on television as star of the weekly series The Hunter (1954), Brave Eagle (1955), Northwest Passage (1958) and The Aquanauts (1960). Because none of his TV projects survived their first seasons, Larsen referred to himself as a "professional failure," though in fact he worked longer and with more frequency than most of his beefcake contemporaries. In 1968, Larsen turned producer/director/screenwriter with the pinchpenny war melodrama Mission Batangas. From 1960 through 1973, Keith Larsen was the husband of actress Vera Miles.

Trivia: Energetic dancer, singer, and actress Rita Moreno was born Rosa Dolores Alverio in Puerto Rico to a family of independent farmers. She moved to New York City with her mother at age five and went on to become one of the few people to win an Oscar, a Tony, an Emmy, and a Grammy throughout her long career. At age 13, she took her vibrant stage presence and star quality to Broadway, and by the next year she had made it to Hollywood, where MGM studio executives suggested she change her name to Rita.Mostly appearing in musicals, her most notable roles of the '50s include Zelda Zanders the Zip Girl in Singin' in the Rain and Tuptim in The King and I. During this close-minded time period in American cinema, she was showcased for her "exotic" qualities in films like Pagan Love Song, Latin Lovers, and The Fabulous Señorita. She also starred in the costume drama The Vagabond King as well as various adventures and Westerns, usually providing the musical entertainment. Her big breakthrough came in 1961 with her role as the spitfire Anita in West Side Story, winning her an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. During the '60s, she took her talents back to the stage and got married, but she did appear in the films Carnal Knowledge with Jack Nicholson and Popi with Alan Arkin. As a mother during the '70s, she turned to television and got involved with the PBS children's series The Electric Company, which led to a Grammy award for her recording contribution to the soundtrack album. She also won Emmy awards for her work on The Rockford Files and The Muppet Show. Meanwhile, she reprised her Tony-winning Broadway role of entertainer Googie Gomez for the 1976 film version of The Ritz. In the '80s, she appeared in the TV sitcom 9 to 5, the detective series B.L. Stryker, and several made-for-TV movies. In the '90s, she provided the voice for the title character in the PBS educational program Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? She started making features again, taking supporting roles in independent comedy dramas, including Slums of Beverly Hills. In 1997, she turned to confrontational drama as Sister Peter Marie Reimondo on the HBO prison drama Oz. Since 2000, she has been a leading advocate of osteoporosis awareness and has appeared in the John Sayles ensemble feature Casa de los Babys in 2003.In 2007, Moreno appeared in a cameo role on the hit series Ugly Betty, playing the title character's aunt. Later that same year, she joined the cast of the drama series Cane, a show about a Latin family and their trials and tribulations running a family owned business. In 2011 she was cast as one of the leads on the sitcom Happily Divorced alongside Fran Drescher.

Trivia: The last in a long line of British actors, Reginald Denny left school at 16 to enter the family trade. His first important assignment was the role of Prince Danilo in a travelling company of The Merry Widow. He first came to the U.S. in a 1912 production of Quaker Girl, then returned to England to star in musical productions. After World War I service as a Lieutenant in the 112th squadron of the British Flying Corps, Denny appeared in several Broadway productions and made his film bow at the New Jersey-based world film studios. Hired on the basis of his finely tuned physiques, Denny starred in Universal's boxing short-subject series The Leather Pushers before being promoted to features. During the 1920s, Denny was one of Universal's most popular stars, headlining a series of frothy domestic comedies, most of which co-starred Laura LaPlante and were directed by William A. Seiter. In talkies, Denny's British accent made it difficult for him to continue in the "all-American" roles he'd been playing at Universal, but he continued to flourish as a character actor, showing up in everything from Romeo and Juliet (1936) to Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1937). He also played the "silly ass" second lead of Algy in several Bulldog Drummond "B" pictures. Since his World War I experience, Denny remained active in aviation; he was a pioneer in the field of radio-controlled aircraft. In fact, the U.S. Navy prototype radio aircraft TDD was named in his honor (the initials stood for Target Drone Denny). A busy actor on films and television into the 1960s, Reginald Denny returned to Broadway in 1958 to replace Robert Coote as Col. Pickering in My Fair Lady.

Trivia: Before turning to films, Irish-born Charles Irwin enjoyed a long career as a music hall and vaudeville monologist. Irwin's talking-picture debut was the appropriately titled 1928 short subject The Debonair Humorist. Two years later, he proved a dapper and agreeable master of ceremonies for Universal's big-budget Technicolor musical The King of Jazz (1930). As the 1930s wore on, his roles diminished into bits and walk-ons; he fleetingly showed up as a green-tinted "Ozite" in The Wizard of Oz (1939) and appeared as the British racetrack announcer describing the progress of "Little Johnny Jones" in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Before his retirement in 1959, Charles Irwin essayed such one-scene assignments as territorial representative Andy Barnes in the first few Bomba the Jungle Boy pictures and Captain Orton in The King and I (1956).

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: The son of British-born character actor Walter Kingsford (Dr. Carey in MGM's Dr. Kildare series), Guy Kingsford had appeared on-stage at London's West End and on Broadway (in Frederick Lonsdale's Once Is Enough (1937) with Ina Claire) but his screen career proved a disappointment. Often appearing unbilled, Kingsford played scores of typical "British" characters and was especially busy during World War II. Father and son appeared together only once, in Bomber's Moon (1943), where, once again, Kingsford Jr. performed unbilled. He later appeared on such television programs as Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and Alcoa Presents.

Trivia: Trained at Iowa's Morningside College for a career as a musician, American actor Emory Parnell spent his earliest performing years as a concert violinist. He worked the Chautauqua and Lyceum tent circuits for a decade before leaving the road in 1930. For the next few seasons, Parnell acted and narrated in commercial and industrial films produced in Detroit. Determining that the oppurtunities and renumeration were better in Hollywood, Emory and his actress wife Effie boarded the Super Chief and headed for California. Endowed with a ruddy Irish countenance and perpetual air of frustration, Parnell immediately landed a string of character roles as cops, small town business owners, fathers-in-law and landlords (though his very first film part in Bing Crosby's Dr. Rhythm [1938] was cut out before release). In roles both large and small, Parnell became an inescapable presence in B-films of the '40s; one of his better showings was in the A-picture Louisiana Purchase, in which, as a Paramount movie executive, he sings an opening song about avoiding libel suits! Parnell was a regular in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle film series (1949-55), playing small town entrepreneur Billy Reed; on TV, the actor appeared as William Bendix' factory foreman The Life of Riley (1952-58). Emory Parnell's last public appearance was in 1974, when he, his wife Effie, and several other hale-and-hearty residents of the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital were interviewed by Tom Snyder.