Trivia: In a business where public scandal and bad-boy behavior are the rule rather than the exception, Paul Newman is as much a hero offscreen as on. A blue-eyed matinee idol whose career successfully spanned five decades, he was also a prominent social activist, a major proponent of actors' creative rights, and a noted philanthropist. Born January 26, 1925, in Cleveland, OH, Newman served in World War II prior to attending Kenyon College on an athletic scholarship; when an injury ended his sports career, he turned to drama, joining a summer stock company in Wisconsin. After relocating to Illinois in 1947, he married actress Jacqueline Witte, and, following the death of his father, took over the family's sporting-goods store. Newman quickly grew restless, however, and after selling his interest in the store to his brother, he enrolled at the Yale School of Drama. During a break from classes he traveled to New York City where he won a role in the CBS television series The Aldrich Family. A number of other TV performances followed, and in 1952 Newman was accepted by the Actors' Studio, making his Broadway debut a year later in Picnic, where he was spotted by Warner Bros. executives.Upon Newman's arrival in Hollywood, media buzz tagged him as "the new Brando." However, after making his screen debut in the disastrous epic The Silver Chalice, he became the victim of scathing reviews, although Warners added on another two years to his contract after he returned to Broadway to star in The Desperate Hours. Back in Hollywood, he starred in The Rack. Again reviews were poor, and the picture was quickly pulled from circulation. Newman's third film, the charming Somebody Up There Likes Me, in which he portrayed boxer Rocky Graziano, was both a commercial and critical success, with rave reviews for his performance. His next film of note was 1958's The Long Hot Summer, an acclaimed adaptation of a pair of William Faulkner short stories; among his co-stars was Joanne Woodward, who soon became his second wife. After next appearing as Billy the Kid in Arthur Penn's underrated The Left-Handed Gun, Newman starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, scoring his first true box-office smash as well as his first Academy Award nomination.After appearing with Joanne Woodward in Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! -- the couple would frequently team onscreen throughout their careers -- Newman traveled back to Broadway to star in Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth. Upon his return to the West Coast, he bought himself out of his Warner Bros. contract before starring in the 1960 smash From the Terrace. Exodus, another major hit, quickly followed. While by now a major star, the true depths of Newman's acting abilities had yet to be fully explored; that all changed with Robert Rossen's 1961 classic The Hustler, in which he essayed one of his most memorable performances as pool shark "Fast" Eddie Felson, gaining a second Oscar nomination. His third nod came for 1963's Hud, which cast him as an amoral Texas rancher. While a handful of creative and financial disappointments followed, including 1964's The Outrage and 1965's Lady L, 1966's Alfred Hitchcock-helmed Torn Curtain marked a return to form, as did the thriller Harper.For 1967's superb chain-gang drama Cool Hand Luke, Newman scored a fourth Academy Award nomination, but again went home empty-handed. The following year he made his directorial debut with the Joanne Woodward vehicle Rachel Rachel, scoring Best Director honors from the New York critics as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The couple next appeared onscreen together in 1969's Winning, which cast Newman as a professional auto racer; motor sports remained a preoccupation in his real life as well, and he was the most prominent of the many celebrities who began racing as a hobby. He then starred with Robert Redford in 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which went on to become the highest-grossing Western in movie history. It was followed by 1971's W.U.S.A., a deeply political film reflecting Newman's strong commitment to social activism; in addition to being among Hollywood's most vocal supporters of the civil rights movement, in 1968 he and Woodward made headlines by campaigning full time for Democratic Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy.After directing and starring in 1971's Sometimes a Great Notion, Newman announced the formation of First Artists, a production company co-founded by Barbra Streisand and Steve McQueen. Modeled after the success of United Artists, it was created to offer performers the opportunity to produce their own projects. Newman's first film for First Artists' was 1972's Pocket Money, followed by another directorial effort, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. After a pair of back-to-back efforts under director John Huston, 1972's The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean and the next year's The Mackintosh Man, Newman reunited with Redford in The Sting, another triumph which won the 1973 Best Picture Oscar. He next appeared in the star-studded disaster epic The Towering Inferno, followed by 1975's The Drowning Pool, a sequel to Harper. His next major success was the 1977 sports spoof Slap Shot, which went on to become a cult classic.A string of disappointments followed, including Robert Altman's self-indulgent 1979 effort Quintet. The 1981 Absence of Malice, however, was a success, and for 1982's courtroom drama The Verdict Newman notched his fifth Best Actor nomination. He finally won the Oscar on his sixth attempt, reprising the role of Eddie Felson in 1986's The Color of Money, Martin Scorsese's sequel to The Hustler. After starring in two 1989 films, Blaze and Fat Man and Little Boy, Newman began appearing onscreen less and less. In 1991, he and Joanne Woodward starred as the titular Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, and three years later he earned yet another Academy Award nomination for his superb performance in Robert Benton's slice-of-life tale Nobody's Fool. His films since then have been fairly sparse and of mixed quality, with Joel Coen's and Ethan Coen's The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) being at the higher end of the spectrum and the Kevin Costner vehicle Message in a Bottle (1999) resting near the bottom. Newman again graced screens in 2000 with Where the Money Is, a comedy that cast him as a famous bank robber who fakes a stroke to get out of prison. For his role as a kindly crime boss in 2002's Road to Perdition, Newman became a ten-time Oscar nominee.Turning 80 in 2005, Newman nonetheless remained a presence in Hollywood. That year, audiences could see him on the small-screen in the critically-acclaimed HBO miniseries Empire Falls, for which he won a Golden Globe, and the following year, he lent his voice to the Pixar animated film Cars.Despite his movement away from Hollywood, Newman remained a prominent public figure through his extensive charitable work; he created the Scott Newman Foundation after the drug-related death of his son and later marketed a series of gourmet foodstuffs under the umbrella name Newman's Own, with all profits going to support his project for children suffering from cancer. Newman died on September 26, 2008 after a battle with lung cancer.

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: Actress Katharine Ross was trained at the San Francisco Workshop, barely completing her apprenticeship before landing leading roles on television. She made her TV debut as a spoiled teenager implicated in a fatal auto accident in Are There Any More Out There Like You?, a 1963 installment of the NBC anthology Kraft Suspense Theatre. Ross was Oscar nominated for her second film role as Dustin Hoffman's amour in The Graduate (1967). After successfully teaming with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, she became mired in a series of steadily worsening films. She staged a comeback as Francesca in the 1985 nighttime TV serial The Colbys. At that time, Ross was married to actor Sam Elliott. Together, Ross and Elliot scripted and starred in an above-average Western TV movie Conagher (1991).

Trivia: A graduate of the University of Michigan, Strother Martin was the National Junior Springboard Diving Champion when he came to Hollywood as a swimming coach in the late 1940s. He stuck around Lala-land to play a few movie bits and extra roles before finally receiving a role of substance in The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Lean and limber in his early day, Martin was frequently cast in parts which called upon his athletic prowess (e.g. a drawling big-league ball player in 1951's Rhubarb). As his face grew more pocked and his body more paunched with each advancing year, Martin put his reedy, whiny voice and sinister squint to excellent use as a villain, most often in westerns. It took him nearly 20 years to matriculate from character actor to character star. In 1967, Martin skyrocketed to fame as the sadistic prison-farm captain in Cool Hand Luke: his character's signature line, "What we have here is a failure t' communicate," became a national catchphrase. While he continued accepting secondary roles for the rest of his career, Martin was awarded top billing in two sleazy but likeable programmers, Brotherhood of Satan (1971) and Ssssssss (1973). A veteran of scores of television shows, Strother Martin was seen on a weekly basis as Aaron Donager in Hotel De Paree (1959) and as star Jimmy Stewart's country cousin in Hawkins (1973).

Trivia: American actor Jeff Corey forsook a job as sewing-machine salesman for the less stable world of New York theatre in the 1930s. The 26-year-old Corey was regarded as a valuable character-actor commodity when he arrived in Hollywood in 1940. Perhaps the best of his many early unbilled appearances was in the Kay Kyser film You'll Find Out (40), in which Corey, playing a game-show contestant (conveniently named Jeff Corey), was required to sing a song while stuffing his mouth full of crackers. The actor was busiest during the "film noir" mid-to-late 1940s, playing several weasely villain roles; it is hard to forget the image of Corey, in the role of a slimy stoolie in Burt Lancaster's Brute Force, being tied to the front of a truck and pushed directly into a hail of police bullets. Corey's film career ended abruptly in 1952 when he was unfairly blacklisted for his left-leaning political beliefs. To keep food on the table, Corey became an acting coach, eventually running one of the top training schools in the business (among his more famous pupils was Jack Nicholson). He was permitted to return to films in the 1960s, essaying such roles as a wild-eyed wino in Lady in a Cage (64), the louse who kills Kim Darby's father in True Grit (68), and a sympathetic sheriff in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (68). In addition to his film work, Jeff Corey has acted in and directed numerous TV series; he was seen as a regular on the 1985 Robert Blake series Hell Town and the 1986 Earl Hamner Jr. production Morningstar/Eveningstar. The following decade found Corey appearing in such films as Sinatra (1992), Beethoven's 2nd (1993) and the action thriller Surviving the Game (1994). Shortly after suffering a fall at his Malibu home in August of 2002, Corey died in Santa Monica due to complications resulting from the accident. He was 88.

Trivia: American actor George Furth attended Northwestern University, a cradle of American acting talent. After getting his master's degree at Columbia, Furth sought out stage work: his first part was in the 1961 play A Cook for Mr. General. Most often cast in films as a bespectacled, nerdish, ineffectual type, Furth appeared in such films as The Best Man (1964) and Myra Breckenridge (1970). His most celebrated movie role was as Woodcock, the by-the-book railroad guard robbed twice by Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). On TV, Furth was seen regularly on Broadside, Tammy, The Good Guys and The Dumplings--situation comedies all. Broadway regulars will recognize the name George Furth less for his acting than for his considerable accomplishments as a playwright; in 1970, Furth wrote the book for Stephen Sondheim's Tony-winning musical Company.

Trivia: Cloris Leachman seems capable of playing any kind of role, and she has consistently demonstrated her versatility in films and on TV since the 1950s. On the big screen, she can be seen in such films as Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Last Picture Show (1971), for which she won an Oscar; and Young Frankenstein (1974). On TV, she played the mother on Lassie from 1957-58, and Phyllis Lindstrom on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77) and her own series, Phyllis (1975-77). She was a staple on many of the dramatic shows of the '50s, and a regular on Charlie Wild, Private Detective (1950-52), and The Facts of Life. Leachman has won three Emmy Awards and continues to make TV, stage, and film appearances, including a turn as Granny in the film version of The Beverly Hillbillies (1993) and supplying her voice for the animated Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) and The Iron Giant (1999). In 1999, she could be seen heading the supporting cast in Wes Craven's Music of the Heart.

Trivia: An unusually bright child, Ted Cassidy was in the third grade by the time he was six years old. This alone was enough to set Cassidy apart from his classmates, but there was something else that made him "different": By the time he was an 11-year-old high school freshman, he was 6'1". A natural for the school's football and basketball team, Cassidy was also the target of harassment from his older, smaller fellow students. Developing an interest in dramatics while attending college, he went out of his way to play characters of all physical types and sizes; he may well have been the only 6'9" Falstaff in theatrical history. Though offered a singing job with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, Cassidy decided on a career as a radio announcer. Upon returning to acting, he landed the first role for which he auditioned: Lurch, the lumbering, monosyllabic butler on the TV comedy series The Addams Family (1964-1965). Though grateful for the opportunity, the sensitive Cassidy bemoaned the fact that he seemed doomed to forever play inarticulate giants. He went on to provide the voice and physical model for Injun Joe on The New Adventures of Huck Finn, a 1968 animation/live-action hybrid produced by Hanna-Barbera, and also supplied the voice of "the Thing" on H-B's Saturday morning cartoon series The Fantastic Four. Though limited in his choice of screen roles, Ted Cassidy played outlaw Harvey Logan in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Trivia: Over-the-top comic actor Kenneth Mars made an unbearably funny screen debut as the ex-Nazi playwright responsible for the smash miss "Springtime for Hitler" in Mel Brooks' The Producers (1968). He was just as exaggerated, though not quite as amusing, as the one-armed police inspector in Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974). Mars seemingly never held anything back, a trait that was prized by his admirers but caused discomfort among his detractors: reviewing the actor's performance in Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up Doc? (1972), Jay Cocks noted, "As a pompous middle-European intellectual, Kenneth Mars mugs and drools in a manner that Jerry Lewis might find excessive." Still, Mars nearly always delivered the laughs -- especially on TV, where he was a regular on such programs as He and She and The Carol Burnett Show. Another of his screen appearances was as a remonstrative rabbi in Woody Allen's Radio Days (1986). Kenneth Mars has also provided voices for dozens of TV cartoon shows, where he sometimes fell prey to the indignity of having his name spelled Len Mars in the credits.

Trivia: Starting out in musicals and comedies, leather-lunged character actor Henry Jones had developed into a versatile dramatic actor by the 1950s, though he never abandoned his willingness to make people laugh. Jones scored his first cinematic bullseye when he re-created his Broadway role as the malevolent handyman Leroy in the 1956 cinemadaptation of Maxwell Anderson's The Bad Seed (1956). Refusing to be typed, Jones followed this triumph with a brace of quietly comic roles in Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956) and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter. He returned to Broadway in 1958, winning the Tony and New York Drama Critics' awards for his performance in Sunrise at Campobello. Since that time, Jones has flourished in films, often making big impressions in the tiniest of roles: the coroner in Vertigo (1958), the bicycle salesman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), the hotel night clerk in Dick Tracy (1990) and so on. From 1963's Channing onward, Jones has been a regular on several weekly TV series, most notably as Judge Jonathan Dexter in Phyllis (1975-76) and B. Riley Wicker on the nighttime serial Falcon Crest (1985-86). Henry Jones is the father of actress Jocelyn Jones.

Trivia: Canadian character actor Donnelly Rhodes made his first American film appearance in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1970). Rhodes gained a daytime-drama following as Phillip Chancellor on The Young and the Restless. In TV's nighttime hours, he was seen as Dutch in the serial spoof Soap (1977-81), as Charlie in Report to Murphy (1982) and as the father of twins Jean and Liz Sagal in Double Trouble (1984). From 1985 to 1992, Donnelly Rhodes starred as Grant "Doc" Roberts in Danger Bay, a Canadian-based adventure series which ran in the U.S. on the Disney Channel cable service.

Trivia: During the '60s, lanky supporting and character actor Timothy Scott got his start playing scruffy bad guys in Westerns such as The Way West (his debut, 1967) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Fans of the film Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) will recognize Scott for playing the gentle homeless alcoholic Smokey Lonesome. In addition to film and television work, Scott was also a partner in the Met Theater and a member of the Los Angeles Classical Repertory Company. In 1994, Scott's extensive work in Westerns was commemorated by his induction into the Cowboy Hall of Fame. The following year, he passed away at the age of 57.

Trivia: Pennsylvania-born actor Don Keefer enjoyed a 60-year-plus career on stage and screen that saw him range freely across character parts and leading roles in both fields. An actor from his youth, he started early playing leads, portraying the title role in The Adventures of Marco Polo for a production of the Child Study Association. He won the Clarence Derwent Award for his early work on Broadway, and spent his early career working alongside the likes of Ethel Barrymore, Helen Hayes, and José Ferrer, and under such directors as Moss Hart, Elia Kazan, and Margaret Webster (including the famed production of Othello starring Paul Robeson). Keefer was a charter member of the Actors' Studio, and originated the role of Bernard, the studious neighbor son-turned-lawyer in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. He was the only actor to remain with the production for its entire Broadway run, and subsequently made his screen debut in 1951 in the movie adaptation of the play produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Laslo Benedek. From that beginning, he went on to appear in more than 130 movie and television productions, in between theatrical work on both coasts (including a stint at the Theatre Group at UCLA under John Houseman). Highlights of his stage career include a highly acclaimed touring production of Anton Chekhov: The Human Comedy, focusing on the lighter side of Chekhov's work. On screen as on stage, Keefer played a wide variety of parts -- he made a fine villain-turned-neutral in "Winchester Quarantine," an early (and very powerful) episode of Have Gun Will Travel, but was equally good as Ensign Twitchell, the comically (yet tragically) over-eager and officious junior officer in Joseph Pevney's Away All Boats, during this same period. Don Keefer was still working in the late '90s, in movies such as Liar Liar and an episode of Profiler. But amid hundreds of portrayals, Keefer's single most memorable role for most viewers -- other than Bernard in Death of a Salesman -- is almost certainly that of Dan Hollis, the doomed neighbor whose birthday celebration comes to a hideous end (his head popping out of a giant jack-in-the-box) in the 1961 Twilight Zone show "It's a Good Life."

Trivia: A hardworking actor who richly deserves cult-figure status, Charlie Dierkop has finessed his mashed-in countenance (his nose) and salty performing style into a 30-year career. Evidently he was a favorite of the Butch Cassidy triumvirate of actors Paul Newman and Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill as he was cast as Flat Nose Curry in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969); when these three worthies reteamed for The Sting (1973), Dierkop came along for the ride as two-bit hoodlum Floyd. Charles Dierkop is perhaps best known as gonzo undercover cop Pete Royster on the Angie Dickinson TV vehicle Police Woman (1974-1978).

Trivia: In films from 1938's Tenth Avenue Kid, American actor Paul Bryar remained a durable character player for over thirty years, usually in police uniform. Among his screen credits were Follow Me Quietly (1949), Dangerous When Wet (1952), Inside Detroit (1955) and The Killer is Loose (1956). He also showed up in one serial, Republic's Spy Smasher (1942), and was a regular in Hollywood's B factories of the 1940s (he made thirteen pictures at PRC Studios alone, three of them "Michael Shayne" mysteries). Television took advantage of Bryar's talents in a number of guest spots, including the unsold pilot The Family Kovack (1974). He had somewhat better job security as a regular on the 1965 dramatic series The Long Hot Summer, playing Sheriff Harve Anders, though he and everyone else in the cast (from Edmond O'Brien to Wayne Rogers) were back haunting the casting offices when the series was cancelled after 26 episodes. One of Paul Bryar's last screen appearances was as one of the card players (with future star Sam Elliott) in the opening scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

Trivia: Through a cruel twist of fate, American actor Sam Elliott came to films at just the point that the sort of fare in which he should have thrived was dying at the box office. A born cowboy star if ever there was one, the stage-trained Elliot made his debut in a tiny role in the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Within a few years, the western market had disappeared, and Elliot had to settle for standard good-guy roles in such contemporary films as Lifeguard (1976). Never tied down to any one type, Elliot's range has embraced sexy "other men" (Sibling Rivalry [1989]) and vicious rapist/murderers (the TV movie A Death in California [1986]). Still, one yearned to see Elliot playing frontiersmen; fortunately, the western genre had not completely disappeared on television, and Elliot was well-served with such hard-riding projects as The Sacketts (1977), I Will Fight No More Forever (1981), The Shadow Riders (1982), Houston: The Legend of Texas (1986) and Conagher (1991), in which he appeared with his wife, actress Katherine Ross. When westerns began showing up on the big screen again in the 1990s, Elliot was there, prominently cast as Virgil Earp in Tombstone (1993) and the made-for-cable sagebrusher The Desperate Trail (1995). Awarded Bronze Wrangler trophies for his involvement in Conagher, The Hi-Lo Country, and You Know My Name, Elliot also made an impression on Cohen Brothers fans with a memorable performance as the laid back Stranger in the cult hit The Big Lebowski. A featured role in the 2000 made for television remake Fail Safe found Elliot hanging up his duster to revisit rising Cold War tensions, and later that same year he would finally make the leap into the new millennium with his role as a presidential aid in Rod Lurie's Oscar-nominated hit The Contender. Rewarded with a double hernia as a result of his intense training efforts to prepare for a role in the 2002 Vietnam War drama We Were Soldiers, the then fifty-seven-year-old endured the pain through the entire production and put of surgery until shooting had wrapped. Though Elliot would remain in the armed forces to portray a military general hell-bent on destroying the Hulk in 2003, his onscreen authority would weaken somewhat when he was cast as a cancer-riddled Marlboro Man in the 2005 comedy Thank You for Smoking. After traveling to the far corners of the globe to carry out a little vigilante justice in the 2006 made for television thriller Avenger, Elliot would next break a little new ground by venturing into the world of animation by lending his distinctive voice to the character of Ben the Cow in Steve Oedekerk's rural family romp Barnyard. He co-starred with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig in The Golden Compass (2007), a film adaptation of the first installment of the wildly successful book series from author Philip Pullman. In 2009 he took on a role in the award winning comedy drama Up in the Air, and co-starred as an eccentric billionaire in director Tony Krantz's The Big Bang in 2011. He joined Robert Redford and Julie Christie to play a supporting role in 2012's comedy drama The Company You Keep.

Trivia: The son of actors, Percy Helton began his own career at age two in a Tony Pastor revue in which his parents were performing. The undersized Helton was a valuable juvenile player for producer David Belasco, making his film debut in a 1915 Belasco production, The Fairy and the Waif. Helton matured into adult roles under the stern guidance of George M. Cohan. After serving in the Army during World War I, Helton established himself on Broadway, appearing in such productions as Young America, One Sunday Afternoon and The Fabulous Invalid. He made his talkie debut in 1947's Miracle on 34th Street, playing the inebriated Macy's Santa Claus whom Edmund Gwenn replaces. Perhaps the quintessential "who is that?" actor, Helton popped up, often uncredited, in over one hundred succinct screen characterizations. Forever hunched over and eternally short of breath, he played many an obnoxious clerk, nosey mailman, irascible bartender, officious train conductor and tremulous stool pigeon. His credits include Fancy Pants (1950), The Robe (1953), White Christmas (1954), Rally Round the Flag Boys (1959), The Music Man (1962) and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1965), as well as two appearances as sweetshop proprietor Mike Clancy in the Bowery Boys series. Thanks to his trademarked squeaky voice, and because he showed up in so many "cult" films (Wicked Woman, Kiss Me Deadly, Sons of Katie Elder), Helton became something of a high-camp icon in his last years. In this vein, Percy Helton was cast as the "Heraldic Messenger" in the bizarre Monkees vehicle Head (he showed up at the Monkees' doorstep with a beautiful blonde manacled to his wrist!), the treacherous Sweetieface in the satirical western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and the bedraggled bank clerk Cratchit on the TV series The Beverly Hillbillies.

Trivia: Cruelly but accurately described by one film historian as "that female mountain of flesh," actress/singer Jody Gilbert was one of moviedom's busiest "large" ladies. The major difference between Gilbert and other "sizeable" character actresses is that she could give back as good as she got in the insult department. As the surly waitress in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), Gilbert was more than a match for her troublesome customer W. C. Fields. She went on to trade quips with Shemp Howard in Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin' (1941) and to aggressively pursue the hapless Lou Costello in Ride 'Em Cowboy (1942). On television, Gilbert was seen as J. Carroll Naish's plump would-be sweetheart Rosa in Life with Luigi (1952), a role she'd previously essayed on radio. One of Gilbert's last screen appearances was the belligerent railroad passenger whom holdup man Paul Newman imitates in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Jody Gilbert died at the age of 63 as the result of injuries sustained in an auto accident.