Trivia: One of the postwar era's most successful actors, Gregory Peck was long the moral conscience of the silver screen; almost without exception, his performances embodied the virtues of strength, conviction, and intelligence so highly valued by American audiences. As the studios' iron grip on Hollywood began to loosen, he also emerged among the very first stars to declare his creative independence, working almost solely in movies of his own choosing. Born April 5, 1916, in La Jolla, CA, Peck worked as a truck driver before attending Berkeley, where he first began acting. He later relocated to New York City and was a barker at the 1939 World's Fair. He soon won a two-year contract with the Neighborhood Playhouse. His first professional work was in association with a 1942 Katherine Cornell/Guthrie McClintic ensemble Broadway production of The Morning Star. There Peck was spotted by David O. Selznick, for whom he screen-tested, only to be turned down. Over the next year, he played a double role in The Willow and I, fielding and rejecting the occasional film offer. Finally, in 1943, he accepted a role in Days of Glory, appearing opposite then-fiancée Tamara Toumanova. While the picture itself was largely dismissed, Peck found himself at the center of a studio bidding war. He finally signed with 20th Century Fox, who cast him in 1944's The Keys of the Kingdom - a turn for which he snagged his first of many Oscar nods. From the outset, he enjoyed unique leverage as a performer; he refused to sign a long-term contract with any one studio, and selected all of his scripts himself. For MGM, he starred in 1945's The Valley of Decision, a major hit. Even more impressive was the follow-up, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, which co-starred Ingrid Bergman. Peck scored a rousing success with 1946's The Yearling (which brought him his second Academy Award nomination) and followed this up with another smash, King Vidor's Duel in the Sun. His third Oscar nomination arrived via Elia Kazan's 1947 social drama Gentleman's Agreement, a meditation on anti-Semitism which won Best Picture honors. For the follow-up, Peck reunited with Hitchcock for The Paradine Case, one of the few flops on either's resumé. He returned in 1948 with a William Wellman Western, Yellow Sky, before signing for a pair of films with director Henry King, Twelve O'Clock High (earning Best Actor laurels from the New York critics and his fourth Oscar nod) and The Gunfighter. After Captain Horatio Hornblower, Peck appeared in the Biblical epic David and Bathsheba, one of 1951's biggest box-office hits. Upon turning down High Noon, he starred in The Snows of Kilimanjaro. To earn a tax exemption, he spent the next 18 months in Europe, there shooting 1953's Roman Holiday for William Wyler. After filming 1954's Night People, Peck traveled to Britain, where he starred in a pair of features for Rank -- The Million Pound Note and The Purple Plain -- neither of which performed well at the box office; however, upon returning stateside he starred in the smash The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. The 1958 Western The Big Country was his next major hit, and he quickly followed it with another, The Bravados. Few enjoyed Peck's portrayal of F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1959's Beloved Infidel, but the other two films he made that year, the Korean War drama Pork Chop Hill and Stanley Kramer's post-apocalyptic nightmare On the Beach, were both much more successful. Still, 1961's World War II adventure The Guns of Navarone topped them all -- indeed, it was among the highest-grossing pictures in film history. A vicious film noir, Cape Fear, followed in 1962, as did Robert Mulligan's classic adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird; as Atticus Finch, an idealistic Southern attorney defending a black man charged with rape, Peck finally won an Academy Award. Also that year he co-starred in the Cinerama epic How the West Was Won, yet another massive success. However, it was to be Peck's last for many years. For Fred Zinneman, he starred in 1964's Behold a Pale Horse, miscast as a Spanish loyalist, followed by Captain Newman, M.D., a comedy with Tony Curtis which performed only moderately well. When 1966's Mirage and Arabesque disappeared from theaters almost unnoticed, Peck spent the next three years absent from the screen. When he returned in 1969, however, it was with no less than four new films -- The Stalking Moon, MacKenna's Gold, The Chairman, and Marooned -- all of them poorly received.The early '70s proved no better: First up was I Walk the Line, with Tuesday Weld, followed the next year by Henry Hathaway's Shootout. After the failure of the 1973 Western Billy Two Hats, he again vanished from cinemas for three years, producing (but not appearing in) The Dove. However, in 1976, Peck starred in the horror film The Omen, an unexpected smash. Studio interest was rekindled, and in 1977 he portrayed MacArthur. The Boys From Brazil followed, with Peck essaying a villainous role for the first time in his screen career. After 1981's The Sea Wolves, he turned for the first time to television, headlining the telefilm The Scarlet and the Black. Remaining on the small screen, he portrayed Abraham Lincoln in the 1985 miniseries The Blue and the Grey, returning to theater for 1987's little-seen anti-nuclear fable Amazing Grace and Chuck. Old Gringo followed two years later, and in 1991 he co-starred in a pair of high-profile projects, the Norman Jewison comedy Other People's Money and Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear. Fairly active through the remainder of the decade, Peck appeared in The Portrait (1993) and the made-for-television Moby Dick (1998) while frequently narrating such documentaries as Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick (1995) and American Prophet: The Story of Joseph Smith (2000).On June 12, 2003, just days after the AFI named him as the screen's greatest hero for his role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, Gregory Peck died peacefully in his Los Angeles home with his wife Veronique by his side. He was 87.

Trivia: After studying briefly at Bowling Green State University, New Jersey-born actress Eva Marie Saint entered the hectic world of live television. With a coolness and maturity that belied her youthfulness, Saint made an excellent impression in her first important stage appearance, 1953's A Trip to Bountiful. The euphoria attending her winning the Drama Critics Award was doubled by her 1954 Oscar win for her co-starring stint with Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. The following year, the blonde, graceful actress appeared with Paul Newman in a TV musical version of Our Town (wherein "stage manager" Frank Sinatra introduced the hit song "Love and Marriage"). Saint continued starring in films with everyone from Bob Hope (That Certain Feeling, 1956) to Cary Grant (in the Hitchcock classic North by Northwest, 1959). A string of mediocre films in the 1970s prompted Saint to seek out more satisfying roles on television before returning to the stage in 1983. More recently, Saint won an Emmy for her performance in the 1989 dramatic special People Like Us. A staple of television throughout the 1990s and well into the new millennium, Saint essayed a supporting role in director Wayne Wang's 2005 family comedy Because of Winn Dixie before stepping into the role of the Man of Steel's mother in director Bryan Singer's Superman Returns the following year.

Trivia: Describing his career as a "five-years upwards first act and a 25-year sliding second act," actor Robert Forster finally got to settle into a satisfying third act when Quentin Tarantino worked his '70s resurrection magic by casting Forster in Jackie Brown (1997). Born and raised in Rochester, NY, Forster was a high school and college athlete, and occasional school thespian. After graduating from the University of Rochester (his third college) with a degree in psychology, Forster opted for acting over law school. Honing his craft in local theater, Forster subsequently moved to New York City where he landed his first Broadway role in 1965. After garnering attention in a 1967 production of A Streetcar Named Desire opposite Julie Harris, Forster made his movie debut in John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) as the au natural horseback-riding private who ignites military officer Marlon Brando's desire. Holding out for interesting offers after Reflections, Forster retreated to Rochester with his wife and worked as a substitute teacher and manual laborer.Enticed back into movies with a role opposite Gregory Peck in Robert Mulligan's Western The Stalking Moon (1968), Forster impressed cinephiles with his third film, Haskell Wexler's seminal counterculture work Medium Cool (1969). As a TV cameraman forced to confront the implications of the tumultuous events he so coolly records, Forster and his co-star, Verna Bloom, were thrust into the real-life turmoil surrounding the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, while Forster's nuanced performance illuminated his narcissist's metamorphosis. Despite its timely subject, however, Medium Cool made little impression at the box office. Though he continued to work in such varied films as George Cukor's widescreen spectacle Justine (1969) and the location-shot Indian reservation drama Journey Through Rosebud (1972), Forster attempted to move to potentially greener TV pastures as the eponymous '30s detective in the series Banyon (1972). Banyon, however, lasted only one season, as did Forster's subsequent TV stint as a Native American lawman in the series Nakia (1974).Forster's slide into B-movie oblivion was hardly stanched by his forays into TV. Though he managed to acquit himself well onscreen in different kinds of parts, Forster professed no illusions about the quality of such movies as The Don Is Dead (1973), Stunts (1977), Disney's sci-fi The Black Hole (1979), and the Rock Hudson disaster flick Avalanche (1978). The smartly comic, John Sayles-scripted creature feature Alligator (1980) failed to thrive beyond its schlock status; Vigilante (1983), starring Forster as a, well, vigilante, was described by one critic as "truly distasteful." Trying his hand behind the camera, Forster produced, wrote, directed, and starred in, alongside his daughter, Katherine Forster, the detective spoof Hollywood Harry (1986), but he got more mileage that same year out of his performance as an Arab terrorist embarking on jihad in Delta Force (1986). Playing a host of bad guys as well as the occasional not-so-bad-guy, Forster put his four children through college from the late '80s into the early '90s with such video fodder as The Banker (1989) and Peacemaker (1990), as well as the TV series Once a Hero (1987) and the well-received indie 29th Street (1991).His career languishing by the mid-'90s, Forster taught acting classes between occasional roles and maintained an optimistic hope that, "some kid who liked me when he was young was going to turn into a filmmaker and hire me." Two casting near-misses for Reservoir Dogs (1992) and True Romance (1993) later (Lawrence Tierney and Christopher Walken respectively got the parts), the by then agent-less Forster finally got his wish when Banyon and B-movie fan Quentin Tarantino cast him in Jackie Brown (1997). Beating out bigger names for the part, Forster proceeded to steal the film from flamboyant co-stars Robert De Niro and Samuel L. Jackson with his subtle performance as weathered, rueful bail bondsman Max Cherry. Though stellar co-star Pam Grier got more attention as Tarantino's latest career rescue, Forster garnered Jackie Brown's sole Oscar nomination. After his Jackie Brown triumph, Forster's image of low-key, regular guy authority kept him steadily employed. Along with playing the de facto voice of sanity in the TV remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1998) and Gus Van Sant's retread of Psycho (1998), Forster faced down space (and production) chaos in Walter Hill's ill-fated Supernova (2000) and played the straight man as Jim Carrey's commanding officer in Me, Myself & Irene (2000). Though his brief appearance suggests David Lynch had more in mind for Forster's role in the aborted TV series, Forster's performance as a deadpan police detective still made it into the critically acclaimed film version of Mulholland Drive (2001).He continued to work in a variety of projects including the kids basketball movie Like Mike and the quirky biopic Grand Theft Parsons. He moved to the small screen to play the father of Karen Sisco in the short-lived TV series of the same name. He also appeared occasionally in the cable series Huff, and had a recurring role in the NBC series Heroes. He had his highest profile success in yeas in 2011 when he played the father of George Clooney's comatose wife in Alexander Payne's Oscar-winning The Descendants.

Trivia: Jamaican-born Frank Silvera attended Northeastern Law School before inaugurating his acting career. One of the few black actors of the 1950s who was able to avoid being typecast by the color of his skin, Silvera played a wide variety of ethnic types, from Latin to Middle Eastern to Oriental. He made his film bow in 1952's Viva Zapata, and shortly thereafter was prominently cast in two of Stanley Kubrick's seminal films, Fear and Desire (1953) and Killer's Kiss (1955). Silvera was founder of The Theatre of Being, which was devoted to helping young African-American actors get started in show business; he also directed several stage plays in New York and Los Angeles. Frank Silvera was electrocuted in his home at the age of 56, while trying to repair an electrical appliance. At the time of his death, he was a regular on the TV series The High Chapparal.

Trivia: University of Oklahoma alumnus Lonny Chapman inaugurated his professional acting career in 1948. While co-starring in the Broadway production of Come Back Little Sheba, Chapman arranged for his college chum Dennis Weaver to understudy for him. Weaver went on to TV fame as Chester on the Western series Gunsmoke, while Chapman prospered as a film character actor, playing such roles as Roy in East of Eden (1955), Rock in Baby Doll (1957), and Deke Carter in Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). On TV, Lonny Chapman starred as private eye Jeff Prior in the 1958 summer-replacement series The Investigator, and was featured as another detective, Frank Malloy, in the 1965 courtroom weekly For the People (1965).

Trivia: Lou Frizzell played supporting roles on stage, screen and television. He came to movies in the late 1960s and during the '70s played in a wide variety of films. Frizzell got his start on the New York stage.

Trivia: Beckman is a stocky character actor, onscreen from the '50s.

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: In films from the mid-'60s, American actor Richard Bull was seen in The Satan Bug (1965), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Secret Life of an American Wife (1969), Newman's Law (1971), and several other major Hollywood productions. Many of these roles were bits or atmosphere characters: guards, policemen, and the like. Television afforded Bull larger character roles, especially in the sitcom field. Within a ten-year period (1964-1974), he guested on Gidget, Family Affair, Gomer Pyle, USMC, The Andy Griffith Show, My 3 Sons, Room 222, and Bewitched (as pilgrim John Alden in a "flashback" episode). He also had a recurring role as a ship's doctor on the mid-'60s fantasy weekly Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. From 1974 through 1982, Richard Bull played store proprietor Nels Oleson, the even-tempered, long-suffering husband of overbearing Harriet Oleson on Little House on the Prairie. Bull continued to appear in films and episodes of TV shows until his death in 2014 at age 89.

Trivia: No one can accuse Richard Farnsworth of taking the easy road to film stardom: by the time he finally got name-above-the-title billing, he was 61 years old, and had been in films for 34 of those years. A veteran Hollywood stunt man, he eventually became a respected actor in his own right, and earned widespread adulation for two outstanding lead performances, first as the veteran train robber released into a changed world in 1982's The Grey Fox and then as the dedicated Alvin Straight in 1999's The Straight Story.Born in Los Angeles on September 1, 1920, Farnsworth was a high-school dropout who became a rodeo rider at the age of 16. When the call went out from MGM for expert horsemen to appear in the Marx Brothers comedy A Day at the Races (1937), Farnsworth was hired as a combination stunt man/extra. The stint was the beginning of a decades-long Hollywood career, over the course of which he did stunt work for many a cowboy star and swashbuckler. For nearly a decade, he was exclusive stunt man/stand-in for Roy Rogers, accepting such occasional outside assignments as Guy Madison's riding double on the 1950s TV Western Wild Bill Hickok (three decades later, Farnsworth would himself impersonate Hickok in the theatrical feature The Legend of the Lone Ranger). Farnsworth's studio years were fairly lucrative; in addition to working with directors ranging from Cecil B. De Mille and Sam Peckinpah, it was not unusual for the stunt man to receive a bigger paycheck than the actors for whom he doubled. In the 1960s, the performer used his considerable clout in his field to co-create the Stuntman's Association, a group which would fight to safeguard the rights and working conditions of the men and women who risked life and limb for Hollywood.As he grew older, Farnsworth thought it wise to cut back on the athletics and to seek out speaking roles. By 1976, he was working as a full-time actor, his weather-beaten countenance and self-assuredness enlivening many an otherwise "flat" scene. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his supporting appearance as Dodger in Comes a Horseman (1978); the star of that film was Jane Fonda, whose father, Henry, had been doubled by Farnsworth in The Tin Star (1957). In 1982, Farnsworth won Canada's Genie Award for his starring role as an elderly, elegant bank robber in The Grey Fox. On two occasions -- the 1984 baseball flick The Natural and the 1992 TV series Boys of Twilight -- the actor co-starred with another venerable stunt man-cum-character actor, Wilford Brimley. Farnsworth continued to craft a career not unlike Brimley's, making small but memorable supporting appearances in many A-list Hollywood productions, including Misery and Havana (both 1990).Farnsworth had been living in semi-retirement on his New Mexico ranch for most of the 1990s when he received a call from director David Lynch to star in The Straight Story, the real-life tale of an elderly widower who drives a tractor from his Iowa home to the Wisconsin bedside of his estranged, gravely ill brother (Harry Dean Stanton). The film received a warm reception, much of which was directed at the septuagenarian's understated, plainspoken performance. Honored with a Golden Globe nomination and an Independent Spirit Award for his work, Farnsworth would also receive a Best Actor nod at the 2000 Academy Awards -- becoming the oldest person to be nominated for the award. Though stricken with terminal bone cancer, Farnsworth continued to make public appearances -- at film festivals, award ceremonies, and even the National Cowboy Symposium -- until the debilitating disease caused him to take his own life at his New Mexico home in October 2000. The actor's namesake, Richard "Diamond" Farnsworth, continued his father's legacy by becoming a Hollywood stunt man.

Trivia: A graduate of Northwestern University, actor James Olson did stage work in and around Chicago before his 1956 film bow in The Sharkfighters. Angular and sandy-haired, Olson was well suited to classical stage roles. In films and on television, it was his lot to portray a long line of understanding husbands, doubting doctors, mystery killers and corporate bigwigs. James Olson garnered some of his best reviews for his performance as Joanne Woodward's autumn romance in Rachel, Rachel (1967), under the direction of Paul Newman.

Trivia: Expert horseman Boyd "Red" Morgan entered films as a stunt man in 1937. Morgan was justifiably proud of his specialty: falling from a horse in the most convincingly bone-crushing manner possible. He doubled for several top western stars, including John Wayne and Wayne's protégé James Arness. He could also be seen in speaking roles in such films as The Amazing Transparent Man (1959), The Alamo (1960), True Grit (1968), The Wild Rovers (1969) and Rio Lobo (1970). According to one report, Boyd "Red" Morgan served as the model for the TV-commercial icon Mister Clean.