Trivia: Joan Crawford was not an actress; she was a movie star. The distinction is a crucial one: She infrequently appeared in superior films, and her work was rarely distinguished regardless of the material, yet she enjoyed one of the most successful and longest-lived careers in cinema history. Glamorous and over the top, stardom was seemingly Crawford's birthright; everything about her, from her rags-to-riches story to her constant struggles to remain in the spotlight, made her ideal fodder for the Hollywood myth factory. Even in death she remained a high-profile figure thanks to the publication of her daughter's infamous tell-all book, an outrageous film biography, and numerous revelations of a sordid private life. Ultimately, Crawford was melodrama incarnate, a wide-eyed, delirious prima donna whose story endures as a definitive portrait of motion picture fame, determination, and relentless ambition.Born Lucille Fay Le Sueur on March 23, 1908, in San Antonio, TX, she first earned notice by winning a Charleston contest. She then worked as a professional dancer in Chicago, later graduating to a position in the chorus line of a Detroit-area club and finally to the Broadway revue Innocent Eyes. While in the chorus of The Passing Show of 1924, she was discovered by MGM's Harry Rapf, and made her movie debut in 1925's Lady of the Night. A series of small roles followed before the studio sponsored a magazine contest to find a name better than Le Sueur, and after a winner was chosen, she was rechristened Joan Crawford.Her first major role, in 1925's Sally, Irene and Mary, swiftly followed, and over the next few years she co-starred opposite some of the silent era's most popular stars, including Harry Langdon (1926's Tramp Tramp Tramp), Lon Chaney (1927's The Unknown), John Gilbert (1927's Twelve Miles Out), and Ramon Navarro (1928's Across to Singapore). Crawford shot to stardom on the strength of 1928's Our Dancing Daughters, starring in a jazz-baby role originally slated for Clara Bow. The film was hugely successful, and MGM soon doubled her salary and began featuring her name on marquees.Unlike so many stars of the period, she successfully made the transformation from the silents to the sound era. In fact, the 1929 silent Our Modern Maidens, in which she teamed with real-life fiancé Douglas Fairbanks Jr., was so popular -- even with audiences pining for more talkies -- that the studio did not push her into speaking parts. Finally, with Hollywood Revue of 1929 Crawford began regularly singing and dancing onscreen and scored at the box office as another flapper in 1930's Our Blushing Brides.However, she yearned to play the kinds of substantial roles associated with Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer and actively pursued the lead in the Tod Browning crime drama Paid. The picture was another hit, and soon similar projects were lined up. Dance Fools Dance (1931) paired Crawford with Clark Gable. They were to reunite many more times over in the years to come, including the hit Possessed. She was now among Hollywood's top-grossing performers, and while not all of her pictures from the early '30s found success, those that did -- like 1933's Dancing Lady -- were blockbusters.With new husband Franchot Tone, Crawford starred in several features beginning with 1934's Sadie McKee. She continued appearing opposite some of the industry's biggest male stars, but by 1937 her popularity was beginning to wane. After the failure of films including The Bride Wore Red and 1938's Mannequin, her name appeared on an infamous full-page Hollywood Reporter advertisement which listed actors deemed "glamour stars detested by the public." After the failure of The Shining Hour, even MGM -- which had just signed Crawford to a long-term contract -- was clearly worried. However, a turn as the spiteful Crystal in George Cukor's 1939 smash The Women restored some of Crawford's lustre, as did another pairing with Gable in 1940's Strange Cargo.Again directed by Cukor, 1941's A Woman's Face was another major step in Crawford's comeback, but then MGM began saddling her with such poor material that she ultimately refused to continue working, resulting in a lengthy suspension. She finally left the studio, signing on with Warners at about a third of her former salary. There Crawford only appeared briefly in 1944's Hollywood Canteen before the rumor mill was abuzz with claims that they too planned to drop her. As a result, she fought for the lead role in director Michael Curtiz's 1945 adaptation of the James M. Cain novel Mildred Pierce, delivering a bravura performance which won a Best Actress Oscar. Warners, of course, quickly had a change of heart, and after the 1946 hit Humoresque, the studio signed her to a new seven-year contract. At Warner Bros., Crawford began appearing in the kinds of pictures once offered to the studio's brightest star, Bette Davis. She next appeared in 1947's Possessed, followed by Daisy Kenyon, which cast her opposite Henry Fonda. For 1949's Flamingo Road, meanwhile, she was reunited with director Curtiz. However, by the early '50s, Crawford was again appearing in primarily B-grade pictures, and finally she bought herself out of her contract.In 1952, she produced and starred in Sudden Fear, an excellent thriller which she offered to RKO. The studio accepted, and the film emerged as a sleeper hit. Once again, Crawford was a hot property, and she triumphantly returned to MGM to star in 1953's Torch Song, her first color feature. For Republic, she next starred in Nicholas Ray's 1954 cult classic Johnny Guitar, perceived by many as a "thank you" to her large lesbian fan base. The roller-coaster ride continued apace: Between 1955 and 1957, Crawford appeared in four films -- Female on the Beach, Queen Bee, Autumn Leaves, and The Story of Esther Costello -- each less successful than the one which preceded it, and eventually the offers stopped coming in.Over the next five years, she appeared in only one picture, 1959's The Best of Everything. Then, in 1962, against all odds, Crawford made yet another comeback when director Robert Aldrich teamed her with Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, in which the actresses appeared as aging movie queens living together in exile. The film was a major hit, and thanks to its horror overtones, Crawford was offered a number of similar roles, later appearing in the William Castle productions Strait-Jacket (as an axe murderer, no less) and I Saw What You Did. Aldrich also planned a follow-up, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, but an ill Crawford was replaced by Olivia de Havilland. The final years of Crawford's screen career were among her most undistinguished. She co-starred in 1967's The Karate Killers, a spin-off of the hit television espionage series The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and she subsequently headlined the slasher film Berserk! The 1970's Trog was her last feature-film appearance, and she settled into retirement, penning a 1971 memoir, My Way of Life. A few years later, she made one final public appearance on a daytime soap opera, taking over the role played by her adopted daughter, Christina, when the girl fell ill.After spending her final years in seclusion, Crawford died in New York City on May 10, 1977, but she made headlines a year later when Christina published Mommie Dearest, among the first and most famous in what became a cottage industry of tell-all books published by the children of celebrities. In it, Christina depicted her mother as vicious and unfeeling, motivated only by her desire for wealth and fame. In 1981, Faye Dunaway starred as Crawford in a feature adaptation of the book which has gone on to become a camp classic.

Trivia: A former accountant for the Gulf Oil Company, Dana Andrews made his stage debut with the prestigious Pasadena Playhouse in 1935. Signed to a joint film contract by Sam Goldwyn and 20th Century Fox in 1940, Andrews bided his time in supporting roles until the wartime shortage of leading men promoted him to stardom. His matter-of-fact, dead pan acting style was perfectly suited to such roles as the innocent lynching victim in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and laconic city detective Mark McPherson in Laura (1944). For reasons unknown, Andrews often found himself cast as aviators: he was the downed bomber pilot in The Purple Heart (1944), the ex-flyboy who has trouble adjusting to civilian life in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and the foredoomed airliner skipper in Zero Hour (1957), The Crowded Sky (1960), and Airport 1975 (1974). His limited acting range proved a drawback in the 1950s, and by the next decade he was largely confined to character roles, albeit good ones. From 1963 to 1965, Andrews was president of the Screen Actors Guild, where among other things he bemoaned Hollywood's obsession with nudity and sordidness (little suspecting that the worst was yet to come!). An ongoing drinking problem seriously curtailed his capability to perform, and on a couple of occasions nearly cost him his life on the highway; in 1972, he went public with his alcoholism in a series of well-distributed public service announcements, designed to encourage other chronic drinkers to seek professional help. In addition to his film work, Andrews also starred or co-starred in several TV series (Bright Promise, American Girls, and Falcon Crest) and essayed such TV-movie roles as General George C. Marshall in Ike (1979). Dana Andrews made his final screen appearance in Peter Bogdanovich's Saint Jack.

Trivia: One of the cinema's most enduring actors, Henry Fonda enjoyed a highly successful career spanning close to a half century. Most often in association with director John Ford, he starred in many of the finest films of Hollywood's golden era. Born May 16, 1905, in Grand Island, NE, Fonda majored in journalism in college, and worked as an office boy before pursuing an interest in acting. He began his amateur career with the Omaha Community Playhouse, often performing with the mother of Marlon Brando. Upon becoming a professional performer in 1928, Fonda traveled east, tenuring with the Provincetown Players before signing on with the University Players Guild, a New England-based ensemble including up-and-comers like James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Joshua Logan. Fonda's first Broadway appearance followed with 1929's The Game of Life and Death. He also worked in stock, and even served as a set designer. In 1931, Fonda and Sullavan were married, and the following year he appeared in I Loved You Wednesday. The couple divorced in 1933, and Fonda's big break soon followed in New Faces of '34. A leading role in The Farmer Takes a Wife was next, and when 20th Century Fox bought the film rights, they recruited him to reprise his performance opposite Janet Gaynor, resulting in his 1935 screen debut. Fonda and Gaynor were slated to reunite in the follow-up, Way Down East, but when she fell ill Rochelle Hudson stepped in. In 1936 he starred in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (the first outdoor Technicolor production), the performance which forever defined his onscreen persona: Intense, insistent, and unflappable, he was also extraordinarily adaptable, and so virtually impossible to miscast. He next co-starred with Sullavan in The Moon's Our Home, followed by Wings of the Morning (another Technicolor milestone, this one the first British feature of its kind). For the great Fritz Lang, Fonda starred in 1937's You Only Live Once, and the following year co-starred with Bette Davis in William Wyler's much-celebrated Jezebel. His next critical success came as the titular Young Mr. Lincoln, a 1939 biopic directed by John Ford. The film was not a commercial sensation, but soon after Fonda and Ford reunited for Drums Along the Mohawk, a tremendous success. Ford then tapped him to star as Tom Joad in the 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, a casting decision which even Steinbeck himself wholeheartedly supported. However, 20th Century Fox's Darryl Zanuck wanted Tyrone Power for the role, and only agreed to assign Fonda if the actor signed a long-term contract. Fonda signed, and Zanuck vowed to make him the studio's top star -- it didn't happen, however, and despite the success of The Grapes of Wrath (for which he scored his first Best Actor Academy Award nomination), his tenure at Fox was largely unhappy and unproductive.The best of Fonda's follow-up vehicles was the 1941 Preston Sturges comedy The Lady Eve, made at Paramount on loan from Fox; his co-star, Barbara Stanwyck, also appeared with him in You Belong to Me. After a number of disappointing projects, Fox finally assigned him to a classic, William Wellman's 1943 Western The Ox-Bow Incident. Studio executives reportedly hated the film, however, until it won a number of awards. After starring in The Immortal Sergeant, Fonda joined the navy to battle in World War II. Upon his return, he still owed Fox three films, beginning with Ford's great 1946 Western My Darling Clementine. At RKO he starred in 1947's The Long Night, followed by Fox's Daisy Kenyon. Again at RKO, he headlined Ford's The Fugitive, finally fulfilling his studio obligations with Ford's Fort Apache, his first unsympathetic character. Fonda refused to sign a new contract and effectively left film work for the next seven years, returning to Broadway for lengthy runs in Mister Roberts, Point of No Return, and The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. Outside of cameo roles in a handful of pictures, Fonda did not fully return to films until he agreed to reprise his performance in the 1955 screen adaptation of Mister Roberts, one of the year's biggest hits. Clearly, he had been greatly missed during his stage exile, and offers flooded in. First there was 1956's War and Peace, followed by Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man. In 1957, Fonda produced as well as starred in the Sidney Lumet classic Twelve Angry Men, but despite a flurry of critical acclaim the film was a financial disaster. In 1958, after reteaming with Lumet on Stage Struck, Fonda returned to Broadway to star in Two for the Seesaw, and over the years to come he alternated between projects on the screen (The Man Who Understood Women, Advise and Consent, The Longest Day) with work on-stage (Silent Night, Lonely Night, Critic's Choice, Gift of Time). From 1959 to 1961, he also starred in a well-received television series, The Deputy.By the mid-'60s, Fonda's frequent absences from the cinema had severely hampered his ability to carry a film. Of his many pictures from the period, only 1965's The Battle of the Bulge performed respectably at the box office. After 1967's Welcome to Hard Times also met with audience resistance, Fonda returned to television to star in the Western Stranger on the Run. After appearing in the 1968 Don Siegel thriller Madigan, he next starred opposite Lucille Ball in Yours, Mine and Ours, a well-received comedy. Fonda next filmed Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West; while regarded as a classic, the actor so loathed the experience that he refused to ever discuss the project again. With his old friend, James Stewart, he starred in The Cheyenne Social Club before agreeing to a second TV series, the police drama Smith, in 1971. That same year, he was cast to appear as Paul Newman's father in Sometimes a Great Notion.After a pair of TV movies, 1973's The Red Pony and The Alpha Stone, Fonda began a series of European productions which included the disastrous Ash Wednesday and Il Mio Nome è Nessuno. He did not fare much better upon returning to Hollywood; after rejecting Network (the role which won Peter Finch an Oscar), Fonda instead appeared in the Sensurround war epic Midway, followed by The Great Smokey Roadblock. More TV projects followed, including the miniseries Roots -- The Next Generation. Between 1978 and 1979, he also appeared in three consecutive disaster movies: The Swarm, City on Fire, and Meteor. Better received was Billy Wilder's 1978 film Fedora. A year later, he also co-starred with his son, Peter Fonda, in Wanda Nevada. His final project was the 1981 drama On Golden Pond, a film co-starring and initiated by his daughter, Jane Fonda; as an aging professor in the twilight of his years, he finally won the Best Actor Oscar so long due him. Sadly, Fonda was hospitalized at the time of the Oscar ceremony, and died just months later on August 12, 1982.

Trivia: A 1941 RKO radio press book claimed that actress Ruth Warrick first came to New York as the winner of something called the "Miss Jubelesta" contest, carrying a live turkey into Mayor LaGuardia's office. It's a safe bet Warrick, a former radio singer and model, would rather be remembered for her first Hollywood accomplishment, which was certainly no turkey: the role of Emily Monroe Norton, Mrs. Kane number one, in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Much too reserved and aristocratic for standard leading lady roles, Warrick was seen to better advantage in character parts. Since 1970, Ruth Warrick has starred as a snooty, status-conscious doctor's wife on the ABC daytime drama All My Children; Warrick alluded to this long-running character in the title of her 1980 autobiography, The Confessions of Phoebe Tyler.

Trivia: The daughter of an ambitious "stage mother," Peggy Ann Garner worked as a model and in summer stock before her sixth birthday. At seven she arrived in Hollywood, appearing briefly in several films; by the early '40s she showed a strong acting talent in larger roles. For her work at age 13 in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn she won a special Oscar as the "Outstanding Child Performer of 1945." Most of her later roles, however, were unrewarding, and her film career all but ended in the early '50s. In 1950 she debuted on Broadway, appearing in many plays in New York and on tour; she also eventually did much work on TV, appearing in TV dramas and series episodes and enjoying a very brief run in a Saturday-afternoon sitcom on ABC called Two Girls Named Smith (1951). By the late '60s she had given up her acting career, though she went on to appear prominently in Robert Altman's film A Wedding (1978). She married and divorced actors Richard Hayes and Albert Salmi, and died of pancreatic cancer at age 52.

Trivia: Coming to films late in life, towering supporting player Nicholas Joy had studied at London's Royal Academy prior to making his stage debut in 1910. French-born of British parentage, Joy quickly became a popular character actor on both sides of the Atlantic, having made an auspicious Broadway debut in Henry V in 1912. Onscreen from 1947, Joy usually played pompous characters and is perhaps best remembered as the archbishop in Joan of Arc (1948) and as the renowned defense lawyer-turned-murder victim in Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer (1949). Joy, who also played Lynn Bari's father in the short-lived 1952 television situation comedy Boss Lady, retired in the late '50s.

Trivia: Snowy-haired Art Baker played avuncular character roles on both stage and screen. Among his movie credits were Once Upon a Time (1944), Spellbound (1946), Daisy Kenyon (1947) and State of the Union (1948). Though never wanting for acting jobs, Baker is best remembered for his radio career (which began in 1936) and his subsequent TV work. Among his many other airwaves credits, Art Baker was the first emcee of the audience-participation program People are Funny and was the host of the long-running human-interest series You Asked for It.

Trivia: Character actor John Davidson entered films in 1914. Though a native New Yorker, Davidson seemed most at home playing sinister Middle Easterners or Europeans; he was, for example, cast as the sheik in Priscilla Dean's 1922 version of Under Two Flags and as Cardinal Richelieu in the 1924 Rudolph Valentino vehicle Monsieur Beaucaire. In talkies, he was seen in roles ranging from bit-part concierges to criminal masterminds. Busiest in serials, Davidson menaced his way through such chapter plays as The Perils of Pauline (1934), Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc. (1941), The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), Secret Service in Darkest Africa (1942), The Perils of Nyoka (1942), and The Purple Monster Strikes (1945). Even in his fleeting A-picture appearances, he remained an unsavory presence (e.g., Benedict Arnold in Where Do We Go From Here?). Once in a while, he'd spoof his established screen image, notably as the capricious sidewalk hypnotist in the 1939 Our Gang one-reeler Duel Personalities. He retired from films sometime in the early '50s. John Davidson is no relation to the singer of the same name.

Trivia: A handsome, dark-haired silent-screen leading man with a widow's peak, Charles Meredith appeared opposite some of the era's great leading ladies, including Marguerite Clark, Blanche Sweet, Mary Miles Minter, Katherine MacDonald, and Florence Vidor. Between 1924 and 1947, Meredith concentrated on the legitimate stage, then returned to film as a distinguished character actor, playing the judge in Joan Crawford's Daisy Kenyon (1947), the High Priest in DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949), and an admiral in Submarine Command (1952). Continuing well into the television era, the veteran actor had continuing roles in two short-lived series: Rocky Jones, Space Ranger (1954) and Erle Stanley Garner's Court of Last Resort.

Trivia: Tall, silver-maned character actor Roy Roberts began his film career as a 20th Century-Fox contractee in 1943. Nearly always cast in roles of well-tailored authority, Roberts was most effective when conveying smug villainy. As a hotel desk clerk in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), he suavely but smarmily refused to allow Jews to check into his establishment; nineteen years later, Roberts was back behind the desk and up to his old tricks, patronizingly barring a black couple from signing the register in Hotel (1966). As the forties drew to a close, Roberts figured into two of the key film noirs of the era; he was the carnival owner who opined that down-at-heels Tyrone Power had sunk so low because "he reached too high" at the end of Nightmare Alley (1947), while in 1948's He Walked By Night, Roberts enjoyed one of his few sympathetic roles as a psycho-hunting plainclothesman. And in the 3-D classic House of Wax, Roberts played the crooked business partner of Vincent Price, whose impulsive decision to burn down Price's wax museum has horrible consequences. With the role of bombastic Captain Huxley on the popular Gale Storm TV series Oh, Susanna (1956-1960), Gordon inaugurated his dignified-foil period. He later played long-suffering executive types on The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and The Lucy Show. Roy Roberts last appeared on screen as the mayor in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974).

Trivia: Curmudgeonly American character actor Griff Barnett first began showing up in movie bit roles in 1942. Barnett's screen time increased considerably after 1946 with solid supporting roles in films like Possessed (1947), Cass Timberlane (1947) and Tap Roots (1948). He was most often seen as stern judges (Angel Face) and small-town doctors (Pinky). Griff Barnett retired in 1955, three years before his death.

Trivia: Very few people remember Tito Vuolo's name, but in more than 40 movies and dozens of television shows -- ranging from comedy to film noir -- the Italian-born actor graced audiences with his presence. With his thick accent, short stature, and open, honest features, Vuolo was for many years the epitome of the ethnically identifiable, usually genial Italian, at a time when such portrayals were routine and encouraged in cinema. He could play excitable or nervous in a way that stole a scene, or move through a scene so smoothly that you scarcely noticed him. Vuolo's movie career began in 1946 with an uncredited appearance as a waiter in Shadow of the Thin Man, and he quickly chalked up roles in two further crime movies, the film noir classics Michael Gordon's The Web and Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death. He was also part of the cast of Dudley Nichols' Mourning Becomes Electra, RKO's disastrous attempt to bring serious theater to the screen, but much of Vuolo's work turned up in films of a grittier nature, such as Anthony Mann's T-Men and The Enforcer, directed by Bretaigne Windust and Raoul Walsh -- the latter film afforded Vuolo one of his most prominent roles in a plot, as the hapless cab driver whose witnessing (with his little girl) of a murder sets in motion a series of events that brings about a dozen murders and ultimately destroys an entire criminal organization. Vuolo's short, squat appearance could also be used to comical effect in a specifically non-ethnic context, as in King Vidor's The Fountainhead, when he turns up at the home of Dominique Francon (Patricia Neal), in place of the expected arrival of tall, lean Howard Roarke (Gary Cooper), in response to her calculated request for repairs to the stone-work in her home. And sometimes he just stole a scene with his finely nuanced use of his accent and an agitated manner, as in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House -- his character goes into an excruciatingly funny explanation to Cary Grant about why he has to blast part of the proposed building site ("Thas-a no rock -- thas-a ledge"). Baby boomers may also remember Vuolo from his role in the 1953 Adventures of Superman episode "My Friend Superman," in which he portrayed a well-meaning luncheonette owner whose claim that Superman is a personal friend of his sets in motion a plot to kidnap Lois Lane. Vuolo's final film appearance was in the Ray Harryhausen science fiction thriller 20 Million Miles to Earth, playing the police commissioner. The beloved character actor died of cancer in 1962. Published dates of birth on Vuolo vary by as much as 19 years (1873 or 1892), so he was either 70 years old or 89 years old at the time of his death.

Trivia: Probably no one came by the label "Runyon-esque" more honestly than Polish-born actor George E. Stone; a close friend of writer Damon Runyon, Stone was seemingly put on this earth to play characters named Society Max and Toothpick Charlie, and to mouth such colloquialisms as "It is known far and wide" and "More than somewhat." Starting his career as a Broadway "hoofer," the diminutive Stone made his film bow as "the Sewer Rat" in the 1927 silent Seventh Heaven. His most prolific film years were 1929 to 1936, during which period he showed up in dozens of Warner Bros. "urban" films and backstage musicals, and also appeared as the doomed Earle Williams in the 1931 version of The Front Page. He was so closely associated with gangster parts by 1936 that Warners felt obligated to commission a magazine article showing Stone being transformed, via makeup, into an un-gangsterish Spaniard for Anthony Adverse (1936). For producer Hal Roach, Stone played three of his oddest film roles: a self-pitying serial killer in The Housekeeper's Daughter (1938), an amorous Indian brave in Road Show (1940), and Japanese envoy Suki Yaki in The Devil With Hitler (1942). Stone's most popular role of the 1940s was as "the Runt" in Columbia's Boston Blackie series. In the late '40s, Stone was forced to severely curtail his acting assignments due to failing eyesight. Though he was totally blind by the mid-'50s, Stone's show business friends, aware of the actor's precarious financial state, saw to it that he got TV and film work, even if it meant that his co-stars had to literally lead him by the hand around the set. No one was kinder to George E. Stone than the cast and crew of the Perry Mason TV series, in which Stone was given prominent billing as the Court Clerk, a part that required nothing more of him than sitting silently at a desk and occasionally holding a Bible before a witness.

Trivia: Billy Crystal notwithstanding, Argentine actor Fernando Lamas did not spend his entire career saying "You...look...MAHHHHvelous". A well-established film star in his native Buenos Aires, Lamas was brought to Hollywood in 1950 with an MGM contract. He went on to play several variations on the standard "Latin Lover" type, with occasional opportunities to display his well-trained singing voice. Beginning with the 1961 Spanish film The Magic Fountain, Lamas entered a whole new phase of his career as a director. In this respect, he was busiest on television, directing episodes of such series as Mannix, Alias Smith and Jones, Gavilan, and Falcon Crest. This last-named series starred Lorenzo Lamas, the son of Fernando and his third wife Arlene Dahl. At the time of his death, Fernando Lamas was married to wife number four, aquatic film star Esther Williams.

Trivia: American actor John Garfield, when judged by looks and attitude alone, seemed more the pugnacious, defiant urban thug than one of Hollywood's most respected dramatic actors of the '30s and '40s. As evidence of his popularity, despite the fact that many insiders considered Garfield's personal ways and beliefs a bit radical, the attendance at his funeral in 1952 broke the records set at Rudolph Valentino's funeral. He was born Julius Garfinkle, the son of poor Jewish immigrants from New York's Lower-East-Side ghettos. Poverty was the norm there, and life was tough. Young Garfield's juvenile delinquent tendencies landed him in a special school for problem children. Still, it was almost inevitable that he would get involved with neighborhood street gangs. He may have remained on those streets struggling to survive, had Garfield not had a special gift for debate, a talent that won him a state-wide contest sponsored by the New York Times. The ensuing scholarship gained him entrance into the Ouspenskaya Drama School and an apprenticeship in repertory theater. Afterward, Garfield hit the road and became a freight-train-hopping hobo and transient worker, but by the late 1930s he returned home to join the Group Theater.Following a role in Odet's production of Golden Boy, Garfield landed a contract with Warners and made his film debut in the melodramatic tragedy Four Daughters (1938). He played a cynical, embittered piano prodigy who finds redemption through a young woman's love, and for her well-being he makes the ultimate sacrifice. It was a powerful multi-textured performance that led to his receiving a nomination for "Best Supporting Actor." Following that success, he appeared in a brief series based on the film and then continued playing assorted angry young men and ill-fated outsiders in such films as Dust Be My Destiny. Though his appearance and demeanor locked him into playing tough outsiders and anti-heroes, Garfield was a versatile actor who unsuccessfully fought with studio heads to play different kinds of roles to demonstrate his true range. Glimpses of it can be seen in such powerful films as Pride of the Marines (1945) in which he plays a real-life war hero who must cope with his battle-caused blindness back home.Beginning with MGM's classic The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Garfield began to establish himself in film noir. He is still considered one of the best actors in that genre, with one of his best films being Force of Evil in which he played a corrupt attorney. Following the end of his Warner's contract, Garfield founded Enterprise Productions and began free-lancing. His distinctly leftist views and staunch support of the working class lead to his being labeled a communist sympathizer by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He did not cooperate at the official hearings and suddenly found it difficult to find work. Though he returned briefly to the theater, Garfield did not flourish. At the age of 39, he died of coronary thrombosis, a condition that some have attributed to the stress the Committee placed upon him. His two surviving children, Julie Garfield and David Patton Garfield (aka John David Garfield or John Garfield Jr.), both became actors during the 1960s.

Trivia: A narrow-faced supporting actor from Sweden, dark-haired Mauritz Hugo (born Mauritz Hugo Ekelöv) was especially effective in action serials of the 1940s and 1950s, and was perhaps at his very best as Barnett, the villainous saloon-keeper in one of Republic's final chapterplays, The Man with the Steel Whip (1954). The son of a pioneer movie theater proprietor, the adventurous Hugo emigrated to the United States at the tender age of 15. After a stint as a salesman, Hugo became a stock company player and may have been in Hollywood films as early as 1938. He was firmly established as a competent supporting actor by 1943 and, having dropped any trace of an accent along the way, was never cast as a "foreigner." Often appearing in Westerns, Hugo was equally proficient in serials, of which he did at least seven. One of the first actors to embrace television, the dapper actor played an important guest-star role in a dual episode of Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe and also appeared on such programs as The Cisco Kid, Sky King, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Bewitched, and Family Affair. He retired around 1970 and died at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: In films from 1941, American character actor Norman Leavitt spent much of his career in uncredited bits and supporting roles. Leavitt can briefly be seen in such "A" pictures of the 1940s and 1950s as The Inspector General (1949) and Harvey (1950). His larger roles include Folsom in the 1960 budget western Young Jesse James. Three Stooges fans will immediately recognize Norman Leavitt from The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962), in which he player scientist Emil Sitka's sinister butler--who turned out to be a spy from Mars!