Trivia: Rugged, athletic, and handsome, Burt Lancaster enjoyed phenomenal success from his first film, The Killers, to his last, Field of Dreams -- over a career spanning more than four decades. Boasting an impressively wide range, he delivered thoughtful, sensitive performances across a spectrum of genres: from film noir to Westerns to melodrama, he commanded the screen with a presence and power matched by only a handful of stars.Lancaster was born November 2, 1913, in New York City. As a child, he exhibited considerable athletic and acrobatic prowess, and at the age of 17 joined a circus troupe, forming a duo with the diminutive performer Nick Cravat (later to frequently serve as his onscreen sidekick). He eventually joined the army, and, after acting and dancing in a number of armed forces revues, he decided to pursue a dramatic career. Upon hiring an agent, Harold Hecht, Lancaster made his Broadway debut in A Sound of Hunting, a role which led to a contract with Paramount. Because the release of his first picture, Desert Fury, was delayed, he initially came to the attention of audiences in 1946's The Killers, a certified classic of film noir. It remained the genre of choice in several of his subsequent projects, including 1947's Brute Force and I Walk Alone the following year.After starring as Barbara Stanwyck's cheating husband in Sorry, Wrong Number, Lancaster and his manager formed their own production company, Hecht-Lancaster, the first notable star-owned venture of its kind; more were to follow, and they contributed significantly to the ultimate downfall of the old studio system. Its formation was a result of Lancaster's conscious effort to avoid "beefcake" roles, instead seeking projects which spotlighted his versatility as a performer. While the company's first effort, the war melodrama Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, was not a success, they were nonetheless able to secure enough financial backing to break off completely from the mainstream Hollywood system. Still, Lancaster also continued to appear in studio productions. In 1949, he reunited with The Killers director Robert Siodmak at Universal for another excellent noir, Criss Cross, followed by Rope of Sand. He also signed a non-exclusive contract with Warner Bros., where he and Hecht produced 1950's The Flame and the Arrow, a swashbuckler which was his first major box-office success. After producing Ten Tall Men with Hecht, Lancaster starred in the MGM Western Vengeance Valley, followed by the biopic Jim Thorpe -- All American. With Siodmak again directing, he next headlined the 1952 adventure spoof The Crimson Pirate, followed by Daniel Mann's Come Back, Little Sheba opposite Oscar-winner Shirley Booth. A minor effort, South Sea Woman, followed in 1953 before Lancaster starred in the Fred Zinnemann classic From Here to Eternity, earning him a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance and, in his beachside rendezvous with co-star Deborah Kerr, creating one of the most indelible images in film history. Another swashbuckler, His Majesty O'Keefe, followed, and under director Robert Aldrich the actor headlined a pair of Westerns, Apache and Vera Cruz. Finally, in 1955, Lancaster realized a long-held dream and helmed his own film, The Kentuckian; reviews were negative, however, and he did not return to the director's chair for another two decades.Again working with Mann, Lancaster co-starred with another Oscar winner, Anna Magnani, in 1955's The Rose Tattoo. Opposite Tony Curtis, he appeared in the 1956 hit Trapeze, and, with Katherine Hepburn, headlined The Rainmaker later that same year. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a blockbuster featuring Lancaster as Wyatt Earp, followed, as did the acclaimed The Sweet Smell of Success. With Clark Gable, Lancaster starred in 1958's Run Silent, Run Deep, followed by Separate Tables. For 1960's Elmer Gantry, he won an Academy Award for his superb portrayal of the title character, a disreputable evangelist, and a year later co-starred in Judgment at Nuremberg. Under John Frankenheimer, Lancaster next portrayed The Birdman of Alcatraz, earning Best Actor honors at the Venice Film Festival for his sympathetic turn as prisoner Robert Stroud, an expert in bird disease. For John Cassavetes, he starred in 1963's A Child Is Waiting, but the picture was the victim of studio interference and poor distribution. Around the same time, Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti was trying to secure financing for his planned historical epic Il Gattopardo (aka The Leopard), and needed to cast an international superstar in the lead role; Lancaster actively campaigned for the part, and delivered one of the strongest performances of his career. Released in 1963, it was a massive success everywhere but in the U.S., where it was brutally edited prior to release. After two hit movies with Frankenheimer, the 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May and the 1965 war drama The Train, Lancaster starred in another Western, The Hallelujah Trail, followed by the 1966 smash The Professionals. A rare series of flops -- The Swimmer, Castle Keep, and The Gypsy Moths -- rounded out the decade, but by 1970 he was back at the top of the box office with Airport. Still, Lancaster's star was clearly dimming, and he next appeared in a pair of low-budget Westerns, Lawman and Valdez Is Coming. After an underwhelming reunion with Aldrich, 1972's Ulzana's Raid, he attempted to take matters into his own hands, writing and directing 1974's The Midnight Man in collaboration with Roland Kibbee, but it failed to attract much attention, either. For Visconti, Lancaster next starred in 1975's Gruppo di Famiglia in un Interno. Remaining in Europe, he also appeared in Bernardo Bertollucci's epic 1900. Neither resuscitated his career, nor did Robert Altman's much-panned Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson. Lancaster languished in a number of television projects before appearing in 1978's Go Tell the Spartans, which, despite critical acclaim, failed to catch on. In 1980, however, he delivered a stunning turn as an aging gangster in Louis Malle's excellent Atlantic City, a performance which earned him Best Actor honors from the New York critics as well as another Oscar nomination. Also highly acclaimed was his supporting role in the 1983 Bill Forsyth gem Local Hero. Heart trouble sidelined him for all of 1984, but soon Lancaster was back at full steam, teaming one last time with Kirk Douglas for 1986's Tough Guys. Several more TV projects followed before he returned to feature films with 1988's little-seen Rocket Gibraltar and the 1989 blockbuster Field of Dreams. In 1991, Lancaster made his final appearance in the telefilm Separate But Equal. He died October 20, 1994.

Trivia: American actor Gary Cooper was born on the Montana ranch of his wealthy father, and educated in a prestigious school in England -- a dichotomy that may explain how the adult Cooper was able to combine the ruggedness of the frontiersman with the poise of a cultured gentleman. Injured in an auto accident while attending Wesleyan College, he convalesced on his dad's ranch, perfecting the riding skills that would see him through many a future Western film. After trying to make a living at his chosen avocation of political cartooning, Cooper was encouraged by two friends to seek employment as a cowboy extra in movies. Agent Nan Collins felt she could get more prestigious work for the handsome, gangling Cooper, and, in 1926, she was instrumental in obtaining for the actor an important role in The Winning of Barbara Worth. Movie star Clara Bow also took an interest in Cooper, seeing to it that he was cast in a couple of her films. Cooper really couldn't act at this point, but he applied himself to his work in a brief series of silent Westerns for his home studio, Paramount Pictures, and, by 1929, both his acting expertise and his popularity had soared. Cooper's first talking-picture success was The Virginian (1929), in which he developed the taciturn, laconic speech patterns that became fodder for every impressionist on radio, nightclubs, and television. Cooper alternated between tie-and-tails parts in Design for Living (1933) and he-man adventurer roles in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) for most of the 1930s; in 1941, he was honored with an Oscar for Sergeant York, a part for which he was the personal choice of the real-life title character, World War I hero Alvin York. One year later, Cooper scored in another film biography, Pride of the Yankees. As baseball great Lou Gehrig, the actor was utterly convincing (despite the fact that he'd never played baseball and wasn't a southpaw like Gehrig), and left few dry eyes in the audiences with his fade-out "luckiest man on the face of the earth" speech. In 1933, Cooper married socialite Veronica Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw, enjoyed a short-lived acting career. Too old for World War II service, Cooper gave tirelessly of his time in hazardous South Pacific personal-appearance tours. Ignoring the actor's indirect participation in the communist witch-hunt of the 1940s, Hollywood held Cooper in the highest regard as an actor and a man. Even those co-workers who thought that Cooper wasn't exerting himself at all when filming were amazed to see how, in the final product, Cooper was actually outacting everyone else, albeit in a subtle, unobtrusive manner. Consigned mostly to Westerns by the 1950s (including the classic High Noon [1952]), Cooper retained his box-office stature. Privately, however, he was plagued with painful, recurring illnesses, and one of them developed into lung cancer. Discovering the extent of his sickness, Cooper kept the news secret, although hints of his condition were accidentally blurted out by his close friend Jimmy Stewart during the 1961 Academy Awards ceremony, where Stewart was accepting a career-achievement Oscar for Cooper. One month later, and less than two months after his final public appearance as the narrator of a TV documentary on the "real West," Cooper died; to fans still reeling from the death of Clark Gable six months earlier, it seemed that Hollywood's Golden Era had suddenly died, as well.

Trivia: Upon completion of her college education, Parisian Denise Darcel flourished as a cabaret singer before being tapped by Hollywood in 1947. She proved herself more than a beautiful face and a Gallic accent with her dramatic performance in the otherwise all-male Battleground (1949). She was then promoted as a "discovery" when she co-starred with Olsen and Johnson in the 1950 Broadway revue Pardon My French. Nothing, however, brought Denise more attention than her "leg art" pose with Lex Barker from her 1950 film Tarzan and the Slave Girl. Dropping out of films after 1954's Vera Cruz, Denise Darcel went back to the nightclub circuit, returning before the cameras only for an occasional television commercial, her hosting chores including the live TV quiz show Gamble on Love (1954).

Trivia: Born Ermes Effron Borgnino in Hamden, CT, to Italian immigrants, Ernest Borgnine spent five years of his early childhood in Milan before returning to the States for his education. Following a long stint in the Navy that ended after WWII, Borgnine enrolled in the Randall School of Dramatic Art in Hartford. Between 1946 and 1950, he worked with a theater troupe in Virginia and afterward appeared a few times on television before his 1951 film debut in China Corsair. Borgnine's stout build and tough face led him to spend the next few years playing villains. In 1953, he won considerable acclaim for his memorable portrayal of a ruthless, cruel sergeant in From Here to Eternity. He was also praised for his performance in the Western Bad Day at Black Rock. Borgnine could easily have been forever typecast as the heavy, but in 1955, he proved his versatility and showed a sensitive side in the film version of Paddy Chayefsky's acclaimed television play Marty. Borgnine's moving portrayal of a weak-willed, lonely, middle-aged butcher attempting to find love in the face of a crushingly dull life earned him an Oscar, a British Academy award, a Cannes Festival award, and an award from both the New York Film Critics and the National Board of Review. After that, he seldom played bad guys and instead was primarily cast in "regular Joe" roles, with the notable exception of The Vikings in which he played the leader of the Viking warriors. In 1962, he was cast in the role that most baby boomers best remember him for, the anarchic, entrepreneurial Quentin McHale in the sitcom McHale's Navy. During the '60s and '70s, Borgnine's popularity was at its peak and he appeared in many films, including a theatrical version of his show in 1964, The Dirty Dozen (1966), Ice Station Zebra (1968) and The Wild Bunch (1969). Following the demise of McHale's Navy in 1965, Borgnine did not regularly appear in series television for several years. However, he did continue his busy film career and also performed in television miniseries and movies. Notable features include The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Law and Disorder (1974). Some of his best television performances can be seen in Jesus of Nazareth (1977), Ghost on Flight 401 (1978), and a remake of Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1979). In 1984, Borgnine returned to series television starring opposite Jan Michael Vincent in the action-adventure series Airwolf. That series ended in 1986; Borgnine's career continued to steam along albeit in much smaller roles. Between 1995 and 1997, he was a regular on the television sitcom The Single Guy. In 1997, he also made a cameo appearance in Tom Arnold's remake of Borgnine's hit series McHale's Navy.At age 80 he continued to work steadily in a variety of projects such as the comedy BASEketball, the sci-fi film Gattaca, and as the subject of the 1997 documentary Ernest Borgnine on the Bus. He kept on acting right up to the end of his life, tackling one of his final roles in the 2010 action comedy RED. Borgnine died in 2012 at age 95.

Trivia: Born in New York City to parents of Cuban extraction, American actor Cesar Romero studied for his craft at Collegiate and Riverdale Country schools. After a brief career as a ballroom dancer, the tall, sleekly handsome Romero made his Broadway debut in the 1927 production Lady Do. He received several Hollywood offers after his appearance in the Preston Sturges play Strictly Dishonorable, but didn't step before the cameras until 1933 for his first film The Shadow Laughs (later biographies would claim that Romero's movie bow was in The Thin Man [1934], in which he was typecast as a callow gigolo). Long associated with 20th Century-Fox, Romero occasionally cashed in on his heritage to play Latin Lover types, but was more at home with characters of indeterminate nationalities, usually playing breezily comic second leads (whenever Romero received third billing, chances were he wasn't going to get the girl). Cheerfully plunging into the Hollywood social scene, Romero became one of the community's most eligible bachelors; while linked romantically with many top female stars, he chose never to marry, insisting to his dying day that he had no regrets over his confirmed bachelorhood. While he played a variety of film roles, Romero is best remembered as "The Cisco Kid" in a brief series of Fox programmers filmed between 1939 and 1940, though in truth his was a surprisingly humorless, sullen Cisco, with little of the rogueish charm that Duncan Renaldo brought to the role on television. The actor's favorite movie role, and indeed one of his best performances, was as Cortez in the 1947 20th Century-Fox spectacular The Captain From Castile. When his Fox contract ended in 1950, Romero was wealthy enough to retire, but the acting bug had never left his system; he continued to star throughout the 1950s in cheap B pictures, always giving his best no matter how seedy his surroundings. In 1953 Romero starred in a 39-week TV espionage series "Passport to Danger," which he cheerfully admitted to taking on because of a fat profits-percentage deal. TV fans of the 1960s most closely associate Romero with the role of the white-faced "Joker" on the "Batman" series. While Romero was willing to shed his inhibitions in this villainous characterization, he refused to shave his trademark moustache, compelling the makeup folks to slap the clown white over the 'stache as well (you can still see the outline in the closeups). As elegant and affluent-looking as ever, Romero signed on for the recurring role of Peter Stavros in the late-1980s nighttime soap opera "Falcon Crest." In the early 1990s, he showed up as host of a series of classic 1940s romantic films on cable's American Movie Classics. Romero died of a blood clot on New Year's Day, 1994, at the age of 86.

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: Born Henry Kleinbach, the name under which he appeared until 1936, Brandon was a tall man with black curly hair; he occasionally played the handsome lead but was more often typecast to play villains. As the latter, he appeared as white, Indian, German, and Asian men. Brandon's film career began with Babes in Toyland (1934) and went on to span fifty years. He played villains whom the audiences loved to hate in serials in the '30s and '40s, such as the Cobra in Jungle Jim, the mastermind criminal Blackstone in Secret Agent X-9, Captain Lasca in Buck Rogers Conquers the Universe (1939), and a sinister Oriental in Drums of Fu Manchu. Brandon played Indian chiefs no fewer than 26 times, notably in two John Ford westerns. He had occasional leading roles on New York stage, such as in a 1949 revival of Medea in which he played a virile Jason opposite Judith Anderson.

Trivia: The son of a Lithuanian coal miner, American actor Charles Bronson claimed to have spoken no English at home during his childhood in Pennsylvania. Though he managed to complete high school, it was expected that Bronson would go into the mines like his father and many brothers. Experiencing the world outside Pennsylvania during World War II service, however, Bronson came back to America determined to pursue an art career. While working as a set designer for a Philadelphia theater troupe, Bronson played a few small roles and almost immediately switched his allegiance from the production end of theater to acting. After a few scattered acting jobs in New York, Bronson enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse in 1949. By 1951, he was in films, playing uncredited bits in such pictures as The People Against O'Hara (1951); You're in the Navy Now (1952), which also featured a young bit actor named Lee Marvin; Diplomatic Courier (1952); Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952), as a waiter(!); and The Clown (1953). When he finally achieved billing, it was under his own name, Charles Buchinsky (sometimes spelled Buchinski). His first role of importance was as Igor, the mute granite-faced henchman of deranged sculptor Vincent Price in House of Wax (1953). The actor was billed as Charles Bronson for the first time in Drum Beat (1954), although he was still consigned to character roles as Slavs, American Indians, hoodlums, and convicts. Most sources claim that Bronson's first starring role was in Machine Gun Kelly (1958), but, in fact, he had the lead in 1958's Gang War, playing an embryonic version of his later Death Wish persona as a mild-mannered man who turned vengeful after the death of his wife. Bronson achieved his first fan following with the TV series Man With a Camera (1959), in which he played adventurous photojournalist Mike Kovac (and did double duty promoting the sponsor's camera products in the commercials). His best film role up until 1960 was as one of The Magnificent Seven (1960), dominating several scenes despite the co-star competition of Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, and others. Most of Bronson's film roles after Seven remained in the "supporting-villainy category," however, so, in 1968, the actor packed himself off to Europe, where American action players like Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef were given bigger and better opportunities. Multiplying his international box-office appeal tenfold with such films as Guns for San Sebastian (1967), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Cold Sweat (1970), and The Valachi Papers (1971), Bronson returned to Hollywood a full-fledged star at last. His most successful films of the 1970s were Death Wish (1974) and its sequels, a series of brutal "vigilante" pictures which suggested not so subliminally that honest people would ultimately have to dole out their own terminal justice to criminals. In many of his '70s films, Bronson co-starred with second wife Jill Ireland, with whom he remained married until she lost her fight against cancer in 1990. Bronson's bankability subsequently fell off, due in part to younger action stars doing what he used to do twice as vigorously, and because of his truculent attitude toward fans. He did little but television work after 1991's The Indian Runner (Sean Penn's directorial debut), with Death Wish 5: The Face of Death (1994) his only feature since. Bronson's onscreen career would soon draw to a close with his role as law enforcing family patriarch Paul Fein in the made-for-cable Family of Cops series.On August 30, 2003 Charles Bronson died of pneumonia in Los Angeles. He was 81.

Trivia: When diehard American movie fans speak of Jack Lambert, they are generally not referring to the British character actor of that name, but of the New York-born supporting player who was most often seen in gangster roles. Following Broadway experience, Lambert came to Hollywood in 1943, to menace Kay Kyser in the MGM musical comedy Swing Fever. Usually a secondary bad guy, Lambert was the main menace -- a scarfaced thug with a hook for a hand -- in Dick Tracy's Dilemma (1947). A less malevolent Jack Lambert was seen on a weekly basis as Joshua on the 1959-60 TV adventure series Riverboat.

Trivia: A graduate of Santa Monica Junior College, Jack Elam spent the immediate post-World War II years as an accountant, numbering several important Hollywood stars among his clients. Already blind in one eye from a childhood fight, Elam was in danger of losing the sight in his other eye as a result of his demanding profession. Several of his show business friends suggested that Elam give acting a try; Elam would be a natural as a villain. A natural he was, and throughout the 1950s Elam cemented his reputation as one of the meanest-looking and most reliable "heavies" in the movies. Few of his screen roles gave him the opportunity to display his natural wit and sense of comic timing, but inklings of these skills were evident in his first regular TV series assignments: The Dakotas and Temple Houston, both 1963. In 1967, Elam was given his first all-out comedy role in Support Your Local Sheriff, after which he found his villainous assignments dwindling and his comic jobs increasing. Elam starred as the patriarch of an itinerant Southwestern family in the 1974 TV series The Texas Wheelers (his sons were played by Gary Busey and Mark Hamill), and in 1979 he played a benign Frankenstein-monster type in the weekly horror spoof Struck By Lightning. Later TV series in the Elam manifest included Detective in the House (1985) and Easy Street (1987). Of course Elam would also crack up audiences in the 1980s with his roles in Cannonball Run and Cannonball Run II. Though well established as a comic actor, Elam would never completely abandon the western genre that had sustained him in the 1950s and 1960s; in 1993, a proud Elam was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame. Two short years later the longitme star would essay his final screen role in the made for television western Bonanza: Under Attack.

Trivia: James Seay was groomed for romantic leads by Paramount Pictures beginning in 1940. After several nondescript minor roles, Seay finally earned a major part--not as a hero, but as a villainous gang boss in the Columbia "B" The Face Behind the Mask (1941). Never quite reaching the top ranks, Seay nonetheless remained on the film scene as a dependable general purpose actor, appearing in such small but attention-getting roles as Dr. Pierce, the retirement-home physician who explains the eccentricities of "Kris Kringle" (Edmund Gwenn) in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). In the 1950s, James Seay joined the ranks of horror and sci-fi movie "regulars;" he could be seen in films like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Killers from Space (1954), The Beginning of the End (1957), and--as the luckless military officer who is skewered by a gigantic hypodermic needle--The Amazing Colossal Man (1957).

Trivia: Charles Horvath entered films in the immediate postwar years as a stunt man. From 1951 onward, Horvath began receiving speaking roles, most often in westerns. He occasionally accepted contemporary parts, playing rednecks and toughs in such films as Damn Citizen (1957). Charles Horvath spent his last decade playing featured roles in films like A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and The Domino Principle (1977).