Trivia: Born August 18th, 1937, the rugged, dashingly handsome Robert Redford was among the biggest movie stars of the 1970s. While an increasingly rare onscreen presence in subsequent years, he remained a powerful motion-picture industry force as an Academy Award-winning director as well as a highly visible champion of American independent filmmaking. Born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on August 18, 1937, in Santa Monica, CA, he attended the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship. After spending a year as an oil worker, he traveled to Europe, living the painter's life in Paris. Upon returning to the U.S., Redford settled in New York City to pursue an acting career and in 1959 made his Broadway debut with a small role in Tall Story. Bigger and better parts in productions including The Highest Tree, Little Moon of Alban, and Sunday in New York followed, along with a number of television appearances, and in 1962 he made his film debut in Terry and Dennis Sanders' antiwar drama War Hunt. However, it was a leading role in the 1963 Broadway production of Barefoot in the Park which launched Redford to prominence and opened the door to Hollywood, where in 1965 he starred in back-to-back productions of Situation Serious but Not Hopeless and Inside Daisy Clover. A year later he returned in The Chase and This Property Is Condemned, but like his previous films they were both box-office failures. Offered a role in Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Redford rejected it and then spent a number of months relaxing in Spain. His return to Hollywood was met with an offer to co-star with Jane Fonda in a film adaptation of Barefoot in the Park, released in 1967 to good reviews and even better audience response. However, Redford then passed on both The Graduate and Rosemary's Baby to star in a Western titled Blue. Just one week prior to shooting, he backed out of the project, resulting in a series of lawsuits and a long period of inactivity; with just one hit to his credit and a history of questionable career choices, he was considered a risky proposition by many producers. Then, in 1969, he and Paul Newman co-starred as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a massively successful revisionist Western which poised Redford on the brink of superstardom. However, its follow-ups -- 1969's Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here and The Downhill Racer -- both failed to connect, and after the subsequent failures of 1971's Fauss and Big Halsey and 1972's The Hot Rock, many industry observers were ready to write him off. Both 1972's The Candidate and Jeremiah Johnson fared markedly better, though, and with Sydney Pollack's 1973 romantic melodrama The Way We Were, co-starring Barbra Streisand, Redford's golden-boy lustre was restored. That same year he reunited with Newman and their Butch Cassidy director George Roy Hill for The Sting, a Depression-era caper film which garnered seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture honors. Combined with its impressive financial showing, it solidified Redford's new megastar stature, and he was voted Hollywood's top box-office draw. Redford's next project cast him in the title role of director Jack Clayton's 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby; he also stayed in the film's 1920s milieu for his subsequent effort, 1975's The Great Waldo Pepper. Later that same year he starred in the thriller Three Days of the Condor before portraying Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in 1976's All the President's Men, Alan J. Pakula's masterful dramatization of the investigation into the Watergate burglary. In addition to delivering one of his strongest performances to date in the film, Redford also served as producer after first buying the rights to Woodward and Carl Bernstein's book of the same name. The 1977 A Bridge Too Far followed before Redford took a two-year hiatus from the screen. He didn't resurface until 1979's The Electric Horseman, followed a year later by Brubaker. Also in 1980 he made his directorial debut with the family drama Ordinary People, which won four Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor (for Timothy Hutton). By now, Redford's interest in acting was clearly waning; he walked out of The Verdict (a role then filled by Newman) and did not appear before the camera again for four years. When he finally returned in 1984's The Natural, however, it was to the usual rapturous public reception, and with 1985's Out of Africa he and co-star Meryl Streep were the focal points in a film which netted eight Oscars, including Best Picture. The 1986 film Legal Eagles, on the other hand, was both a commercial and critical stiff, and in its wake Redford returned to the director's chair with 1988's The Milagro Beanfield War. Apart from narrating the 1989 documentary To Protect Mother Earth -- one of many environmental activities to which his name has been attached -- Redford was again absent from the screen for several years before returning in 1990's Havana. The star-studded Sneakers followed in 1992, but his most significant effort that year was his third directorial effort, the acclaimed A River Runs Through It. In 1993 Redford scored his biggest box-office hit in some time with the much-discussed Indecent Proposal. He followed in 1994 with Quiz Show, a pointed examination of the TV game-show scandals of the 1950s which many critics considered his most accomplished directorial turn to date. After the 1996 romantic drama Up Close and Personal, he began work on his adaptation of Nicholas Evans' hit novel The Horse Whisperer. The filmmaker was back behind the camera in 2000 as the director and producer of The Legend of Bagger Vance. The film's sentimental mixture of fantasy and inspiration scored with audiences, and Redford next turned back to acting with roles in The Last Castle and Spy Game the following year. Though Castle garnered only a lukewarm response from audiences and critics alike, fans were nevertheless primed to see the seasoned actor share the screen with his A River Runs Through It star Brad Pitt in the eagerly anticipated Spy Game. 2004 brought with it a starring role for Redford, alongside Helen Mirren and Willem Dafoe, in The Clearing; he played a kidnapping victim dragged into the woods at gunpoint. The film drew a mixed response; some reviewers praised it as brilliant, while others felt it only average. In 2005, Redford co-starred with Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lopez in the Lasse Hallstrom-directed An Unfinished Life. In addition to his acting and directing work, Redford has also flexed his movie industry muscle as the founder of the Sundance Institute, an organization primarily devoted to promoting American independent filmmaking. By the early '90s, the annual Sundance Film Festival, held in the tiny community of Park City, Utah, had emerged as one of the key international festivals, with a reputation as a major launching pad for young talent. An outgrowth of its success was cable's Sundance Channel, a network similarly devoted to promoting and airing indie fare; Redford also planned a circuit of art house theaters bearing the Sundance name.

Trivia: Though perhaps best remembered for portraying the wise and crusty Grandpa Zeb Walton on the long-running The Waltons (1972-1978), character actor Will Geer had been a staple in films and television for many years before that. He had also been a Broadway regular since his theatrical debut in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1928). Born William Auge Ghere in Frankfort, IN, his interest in acting began in high school. Geer studied botany at the University of Chicago and earned a master's in botany at Columbia. During his college days, Geer also appeared in student theater. Always a bit of a rebel with a genuine love of people and the land, Geer hooked up with folksingers Woody Guthrie and Burl Ives during the Depression to travel about and perform, mostly at government work camps. Even late in life, Geer described himself as a folklorist. Actress Helen Hayes wryly described him once as "the world's oldest hippie." He got his professional start with Eva Le Gallienne's National Repertory Company. During the '30s and '40s, Geer appeared often on Broadway. Beginning with The Misleading Lady in 1932, he began playing small occasional roles in films. By the late '40s, he had become a character actor in such films as Intruder in the Dust (1949). He often appeared in Westerns like Comanche Territory and Broken Arrow (1950). In 1951, after appearing in four films that year, Geer was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee for refusing to answer their questions. Still, Geer managed to appear in at least one film, Salt of the Earth, a defiant, incendiary documentary look at a worker's strike led by the wives of abused salt miners in New Mexico that featured a production staff largely comprised of blackballed Hollywood artists. Other than that, Geer returned to Broadway until 1962 when Otto Preminger cast him as a Senate minority leader in Advise and Consent. During the '60s, the 6'2", 230-pound Geer was frequently cast in villainous roles. He often appeared on television throughout the decade in shows ranging from Gunsmoke to Hawaii 5-0 as well as playing a regular role on the short-lived series The Young Rebels (1970-1971). He was a key member of The Waltons from the pilot special through his death when the series was on summer hiatus in 1978. His was among the show's most popular characters and he is said to have patterned Zebulon Walton after producer/creator Earl Hamner's book character, himself, and his own grandfather, a successful sourdough during the California goldrush who sported a mustache and white hair similar to Geer's own. It was his grandfather who taught the actor to love nature and to study botany. In addition to his work on the popular family series, Geer also continued a busy feature-film and television-movie career. His last film appearance was in the highly regarded made-for-TV biography of Harriet Tubman, A Woman Called Moses (1978). His daughter, Ellen Geer, is also an actor.

Trivia: Stefan Gierasch made his earliest Broadway appearances in comic juvenile roles in such popular fare as Kiss and Tell and A Hatful of Rain. As he matured, Gierasch was afforded meatier assignments in plays like a Hatful of Rain, Compulsion and The Iceman Cometh. He made his first film appearance as a preacher in The Hustler (1961); subsequent film roles have included murder victim Professor Schreiner in Silver Streak (1974), Principal Norton in Carrie (1976) and the House Majority Leader in Dave (1993). Stefan Gierasch has been seen on TV as hospital bureaucrat J. Powell Karbo in AES Hudson Street (1978) and in the dual role of Professor Woodard and Joshua in the 1991 prime time revival of Dark Shadows. Gierasch continued acting through the late 2000s, appearing in TV shows and movies, including a guest spot on ER. He died in 2014, at age 88.

Trivia: Gamine-like Canadian singer-dancer Allyn Ann McLerie built her reputation on Broadway, where she made her debut at 16 in the chorus of One Touch of Venus. She rose to stardom playing soubrette roles in such hits as Leonard Bernstein's On the Town and Irving Berlin's Miss Liberty Four years after her tentative movie debut in the 1948 MGM feature Words and Music Ms. McLerie won a Warner Bros. contract when she repeated her Broadway role of Amy Spettigue in the film version of Frank Loesser's Where's Charley? Rapidly outgrowing the wearisome ingenues assigned her by the studio, Allyn temporarily retired in 1954. Resuming her acting, singing and dancing lessons in the mid-1960s, Allyn slowly reemerged as a versatile character actress, popping up in such small but powerful roles as Red Buttons' psychotic dance partner in They Shoot Horses, Don't They (1969) and the "wrong" White House source in All the President's Men (1976). On TV, she played spinsterish secretary Janet Reubner on The Tony Randall Show (1976-78), while on the 1987 critic's darling Days and Nights of Molly Dodd she portrayed Molly's divorced mother. Allyn Ann McLerie has been married twice, to actor/playwright/lyricist Adolph Green and to Broadway leading man George Gaynes.

Trivia: In 1959, American actor Charles Tyner appeared on Broadway with film star Paul Newman in Sweet Bird of Youth. Duly impressed by Tyner's work, Newman brought his theatrical coworker to Hollywood eight years later to play Boss Higgins, the sadistic prison camp guard in Cool Hand Luke (1967). It was the first of many such roles for Tyner, who spent the next several years playing a variety of tight-lipped, vicious rural authority figures. One of his better roles in this vein was as Unger, the vengeful football playing "screw" in the Burt Reynolds prison comedy The Longest Yard (1974). Less brutal but no less inimitable was Tyner's interpretation of Uncle Victor in the 1971 cult classic Harold and Maude. Charles Tyner went back to the stage in 1977, occasionally stepping before the cameras for such TV movies as The Incredible Journey of Dr. Meg Laurel (1979), theatrical features like Hamburger: The Motion Picture (1985) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1991), and his recurring role as Howard Rodman on the weekly television drama Father Murphy (1981).

Trivia: Though his melodiously accented speech pattern has led many to assume that actor Paul Benedict is British, the actor was actually born in New Mexico. Benedict's oversized jaw and angular features won him several character roles once he decided upon a theatrical career. One evening, a doctor who had seen Benedict on stage warned the actor that his elongated facial structure was due to a rare bone disease called acromegaly, which ultimately distorts the face into grotesqueness and can result in early death (filmdom's most famous victim of acromegaly was horror star Rondo Hatton). Undergoing medical treatment to prevent the spread of the disease, Benedict continued acting, utilizing his odd facial features for comic rather than tragic effect. While appearing in featured roles in such films as The Goodbye Girl (1977), Paul Benedict was cast as next-door neighbor Harley Bentley, an eccentric UN translator, on the long running TV series The Jeffersons. He played Harley steadily from 1975 to 1981, left for two years to pursue other projects (including the Steve Martin comedy The Man With Two Brains [1983]), but returned in 1983 to remain with The Jeffersons until its final episode two years later. He died in 2008 at age 70.

Trivia: A country-western singer who has occasionally acted in films, she appeared onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: One of the most prolific actors in television history -- with starring roles in 11 different television series under his belt -- Harry Morgan is most closely identified with his portrayal of Colonel Sherman Potter on M*A*S*H (1975-83). But his credits go back to the 1930s, embracing theater and film as well as the small screen. Born Harry Bratsberg in Detroit, Michigan, in 1915, he made his Broadway debut with the Group Theatre in 1937 as Pepper White in the original production of Golden Boy, alongside Luther Adler, Phoebe Brand, Howard Da Silva, Lee J. Cobb, Morris Carnovsky, Frances Farmer, Elia Kazan, John Garfield, Martin Ritt, and Roman Bohnen. His subsequence stage appearances between 1939 and 1941 comprised a string of failures -- most notably Clifford Odets' Night Music, directed by Harold Clurman; and Robert Ardrey's Thunder Rock, directed by Elia Kazan -- before he turned to film work. Changing his name to Henry Morgan, he appeared in small roles in The Shores of Tripoli, The Loves of Edgar Allen Poe, and Orchestra Wives, all from 1942. Over the next two years, he essayed supporting roles in everything from war movies to Westerns, where he showed an ability to dominate the screen with his voice and his eyes. Speaking softly, Morgan could quietly command a scene, even working alongside Henry Fonda in the most important of those early pictures, The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). Over the years following World War II, Morgan played ever-larger roles marked by their deceptive intensity. And even when he couldn't use his voice in a role, such as that of the mute and sinister Bill Womack in The Big Clock (1948), he was still able to make his presence felt in every one of his scenes with his eyes and his body movements. He was in a lot of important pictures during this period, including major studio productions such as All My Sons (1948), Down to the Sea in Ships (1949), and Madame Bovary (1949). He also appeared in independent films, most notably The Well (1951) and High Noon (1952). One of the more important of those roles was his portrayal of a professional killer in Appointment With Danger (1951), in which he worked alongside fellow actor Jack Webb for the first time. Morgan also passed through the stock company of director Anthony Mann, working in a brace of notable outdoor pictures across the 1950s. It was during the mid-1950s, as he began making regular appearances on television, that he was obliged to change his professional name to Harry Morgan (and, sometimes, Henry "Harry" Morgan), owing to confusion with another performer named Henry Morgan, who had already established himself on the small screen and done some movie acting as well. And it was at this time that Morgan, now billed as Harry Morgan, got his first successful television series, December Bride, which ran for five seasons and yielded a spin-off, Pete and Gladys. Morgan continued to appear in movies, increasingly in wry, comedic roles, most notably Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), but it was the small screen where his activity was concentrated throughout the 1960s.In 1966, Jack Webb, who had become an actor, director, and producer over the previous 15 years, decided to revive the series Dragnet and brought Morgan aboard to play the partner of Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday. As Officer Bill Gannon, Morgan provided a wonderful foil for the deadpan, no-nonsense Friday, emphasizing the natural flair for comic eccentricity that Morgan had shown across the previous 25 years. The series ran for four seasons, and Morgan reprised the role in the 1987 Dragnet feature film. He remained a busy actor going into the 1970s, when true stardom beckoned unexpectedly. In 1974, word got out that McLean Stevenson was planning on leaving the successful series M*A*S*H, and the producers were in the market for a replacement in the role of the military hospital's commanding officer. Morgan did a one-shot appearance as a comically deranged commanding general and earned the spot as Stevenson's replacement. Morgan worked periodically in the two decades following the series' cancellation in 1983, before retiring after 1999. He died in 2011 at age 96.

Trivia: The son of actors John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan, Tim McIntire began his career in his teens, occasionally showing up on his dad's TV series Wagon Train. His first regular weekly TV work was in the role of Bob Younger on the 1966 prime-timer The Legend of Jesse James. Matheson kept busy into the 1980s with a steady stream of small but distinct character roles; he enjoyed a rare starring assignment as rock 'n' roll maven Alan Freed in 1978's American Hot Wax. He wrote the musical score for the 1975 cult favorite A Boy and His Dog, and provided the voice of Blood the dog (one of his many voiceover assignments during this period); he also wrote and performed the music for 1971's Jeremiah Johnson. Tim McIntire died of heart failure at age 43.