Trivia: He began acting while a college student, then became president of his school's Dramatic Club. In 1927 Tone began his professional stage career in stock, then soon made it to Broadway. He began appearing in films in 1932, going on to a busy screen career in which he was typecast as a debonair, tuxedo-wearing playboy or successful man-about-town. For his work in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. In the early '50s he gave up films to return to the stage; after appearing in an off-Broadway prouction of Uncle Vanya he returned to film in the play's screen version (1958), which he co-produced, co-directed, and starred in. He appeared in a handful of films in the '60s; meanwhile, onstage he got good reviews for his performance in the New York revival of Strange Interlude. In the mid '60s he costarred in the TV series "Ben Casey." He was married four times; his wives included actresses Joan Crawford, Jean Wallace, Barbara Payton, and Dolores Dorn-Heft.

Trivia: When redheaded band vocalist Martha Jean Lafferty was casting about for a professional name, she chose Janet Blair, claiming that she named herself after her county of birth, Blair County, Pennsylvania. Janet was signed to a Columbia Pictures contract in 1941, appearing in such programmers as Blondie Goes to College (1941) before graduating to the "dish" title role in My Sister Eileen (1942). Her last assignments at Columbia were nondescript leading-lady stints in Red Skelton's The Fuller Brush Man (1948) and the swashbuckling The Black Arrow (1948). She left Hollywood for Broadway in 1950, then toured for many years in the road company of South Pacific, eventually playing the leading role of Nellie Forbush more often than any other actress. She returned to moviemaking in 1957; the best of her later film roles was the suspected sorceress in the British Burn, Witch, Burn (1962). Janet Blair's TV activities included several musical specials of the 1950s and 1960s, one of them based on the exploits of globetrotting journalist Nellie Bly; she also played Sid Caesar's wife in many of the comedian's TV appearances of the 1956-57 season, co-hosted 1959's The Chevy Show with singer John Raitt, and portrayed the wife of detective Henry Fonda on the 1971 "drammedy" The Smith Family.

Trivia: Blonde, Brooklyn-born model and chorus girl Adele Jergens gained national fame when she was elected "Miss World's Fairest" at the 1939 World's Fair; if one chose to believe her "official" birth date, she was 13 years old at the time. Signed to a Columbia Pictures contract in 1944, Jergens showed up in that studio's "A" and "B" product in a succession of hard-boiled and "loose" roles. Her most curious assignment at Columbia was 1949's Ladies of The Chorus, wherein 27-year-old Jergens played the mother of 23-year-old Marilyn Monroe. Evidently, Jergens was possessed of a good nature, else she wouldn't have seemed so comfortable playing the foil to such comedians as Red Skelton, Abbott & Costello, Alan Young and even the Bowery Boys. Mostly consigned to programmers in the 1950s, Jergens enjoyed a rare "A" part in MGM's psychological melodrama The Cobweb. Adele Jergens was the widow of actor Glenn Langan, whom she married in 1949.

Trivia: Tall, outgoing American actress Janis Carter had initially planned to become a concert pianist, but switched her interests to opera while attending Western Reserve University. She worked steadily on Broadway in such musicals as DuBarry Was a Lady and Panama Hattie, the latter musical winning her a 20th Century-Fox contract. Curiously, Janis sang only in her first film, Cadet Girl. Thereafter, she was shunted off to comedy-relief and "other woman" roles. Her best screen performance was as the hard-boiled anti-heroine in the Columbia noir programmer Framed (1947). Janis Carter and the movie industry parted company in 1952, after which she focused her energies upon television; from 1954 through 1956, Janis and Bud Collyer co-hosted the daytime quiz show Feather Your Nest.

Trivia: American actress Glenda Farrell, like so many other performers born around the turn of the century, made her stage debut in a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her first adult professional job was with Virginia Brissac's stock company in San Diego, after which she worked up and down the California coast until leaving for Broadway in the late 1920s. Farrell's performance in the stage play Skidding established her reputation, and in 1929 she was wooed to Hollywood along with many other stage actors in the wake of the "talkie" revolution. Uncharacteristically cast as the ingenue in Little Caesar (1930), Farrell would thereafter be cast in the fast-talking, "hard-boiled dame" roles that suited her best. Though her characters had a tough veneer, Farrell was sensitive enough to insist upon script changes if the lines and bits of business became too rough and unsympathetic; still, she seemed to revel in the occasional villainess, notably her acid performance as Paul Muni's mercenary paramour in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang(1932). In 1937, Farrell was assigned by Warner Bros. to portray dauntless news reporter Torchy Blaine in a series of brisk "B" pictures. She was gratified by the positive fan mail she received for Torchy, and justifiably proud of her ability to spout out 390 words per minute in the role, but Farrell decided to leave Warners and free-lance after five "Torchy Blaines." The actress's character roles in the 1940s and 1950s may have been smaller than before, but she always gave 100 percent to her craft. Farrell moved into television with ease, appearing on virtually every major dramatic weekly series and ultimately winning an Emmy for her work on the two-part Ben Casey episode of 1963, "A Cardinal Act of Mercy." Farrell's exit from movies was the 1964 Jerry Lewis farce The Disorderly Orderly, an assignment she plunged into with all the enthusiasm and sheer professionalism that she'd brought to the rest of her screen career.

Trivia: Czech character actor Steven Geray was for many years a member in good standing of the Hungarian National Theater. He launched his English-speaking film career in Britain in 1935, then moved to the U.S. in 1941. His roles ranged from sinister to sympathetic, from "A" productions like Gilda (1946) to potboilers like El Paso (1949). He flourished during the war years, enjoying top billing in the moody little romantic melodrama So Dark the Night (1946), and also attracting critical praise for his portrayal of Dirk Stroeve in The Moon and Sixpence (1942). Many of Geray's film appearances in the 1950s were unbilled; when he was given screen credit, it was usually as "Steve Geray." Geray's busy career in film and television continued into the 1960s. Steven Geray worked until he had obviously depleted his physical strength; it was somewhat sad to watch the ailing Geray struggle through the western horror pic Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1965).

Trivia: Long before embarking on his talking picture career, Tom Powers was a firmly established Broadway star. He began as a musical comedy lead, then moved on to dynamic dramatic roles in such Theatre Guild productions as Strange Interlude, in which he created the role of Charles Marsden. Except for a brief flurry of activity at the Vitagraph studios in 1910, Powers barely gave movies a second thought until he was invited to play the murder victim in 1944's Double Indemnity. Powers spent the rest of his professional life before the cameras, usually playing coarse, blunt detectives and businessmen. In the early '50s, Powers remained on call at 20th Century Fox for unbilled minor roles in such films as Deadline U.S.A. (1952), We're Not Married (1952), and Phone Call From a Stranger (1952). He also appeared in a dozen of TV programs, among them The Lone Ranger, Fireside Theatre, Four Star Playhouse, and Climax. A prolific writer, Tom Powers published the best-selling memoir He Knew Them All, and in 1935 starred in a syndicated radio series in which he read his own poetry.

Trivia: American actress Lynn Merrick was billing herself as Marilyn Merrick when she began playing western ingenues in 1938. Merrick's most frequent co-star during her formative film years was Republic cowboy hero Don "Red" Berry. Shortening her first name from Marilyn to Lynn, she signed on with Columbia in 1941. During the war years, she was an all-purpose heroine in such Columbia "B"-picture series as "Boston Blackie," "Crime Doctor" and "The Whistler". Her best performance was as pretentious drama student Eve Sharon in the lively mystery Nine Girls (1944). Lynn Merrick retired from films in 1948. She died at her home in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 25, 2007, after a long illness.

Trivia: Born in Canada, he was brought up in New York City. For a while he was a professional swimmer in a water carnival. He became a stage actor, appearing in many productions in stock and on Broadway; he often appeared in Shakespeare. In the mid '40s he began working in films, at first in lead roles that tended to be introspective; as time went by, he was cast in secondary roles, often as a pessimistic bad guy. For his work in All the King's Men (1949) he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. In the '60s his career began to dry up, and he appeared in many low-budget Italian films; however, he stayed busy as a screen actor into the '80s, often appearing in action or horror films. He co-directed and co-produced the film Outlaw Territory (1953). From 1949-56 he was married to actress Joanne Dru.

Trivia: American utility actor Donald Curtis made his screen bow sometime around 1940. Plying his trade in serials and Westerns, Curtis specialized in villainy, usually at Columbia Pictures. One of his larger roles was as a sourpussed murder suspect in Red Skelton's The Fuller Brush Man (1948). Active until 1967, when he left show business to become a clergyman, Donald Curtis worked frequently in television, co-starring with Lynn Bari in the 1950 comedy-mystery series The Detective's Wife.

Trivia: Italian-born actor Eduardo Ciannelli was mostly known for his sinister gangster roles, but he first rose to fame as an opera singer and musical comedy star! The son of a doctor who operated a health spa, Ciannelli was expected to follow his father's footsteps into the medical profession, and to that end studied at the University of Naples. Launching his career in grand opera as a baritone, Ciannelli came to the U.S. after World War I, where he was headlined in such Broadway productions as Rose Marie and Lady Billy. He switched to straight acting with the Theatre Guild in the late 1920s, co-starring with luminaries like the Lunts and Katherine Cornell. Cianelli's resemblance to racketeer Lucky Luciano led to his being cast as the eloquent but deadly gangster Trock Estrella in Maxwell Anderson's Winterset, the role that brought him to Hollywood on a permanent basis (after a couple of false starts) in 1936. He followed up the film version of Winterset with a Luciano-like role in the Bette Davis vehicle Marked Women (1937), then did his best to avoid being typed as a gangster. After inducing goosebumps in Gunga Din (1939) as the evil Indian cult leader ("Kill for the love of Kali!"), Ciannelli did an about-face as the lovable, effusive Italian speakeasy owner in Kitty Foyle (1940)--and was nominated for an Oscar in the process. During the war, the actor billed himself briefly as Edward Ciannelli, and in this "guise" brought a measure of dignity to his title role in the Republic serial The Mysterious Dr. Satan (1945). He returned to Italy in the 1950s to appear in European films and stage productions, occasionally popping up in Hollywood films as ageing Mafia bosses and self-made millionaires. In 1959, he was seen regularly as a nightclub owner on the TV detective series Johnny Staccato. Had he lived, Eduardo Ciannelli would have been ideal for the starring role in 1972's The Godfather, as he proved in a similar assignment in the 1968 Mafia drama The Brotherhood.

Trivia: When actor Robert H. Barrat moved from stage to films in the early 1930s, he found himself twice blessed: He was dignified-looking enough to portray business and society types, but also athletic enough to get down and dirty in barroom-brawl scenes. An ardent physical-fitness advocate in real life, Barrat was once described by his friend and frequent co-worker James Cagney as having "a solid forearm the size of the average man's thigh"; as a result, the usually cautious Cagney was extra careful during his fight scenes with the formidable Barrat. The actor's size and menacing demeanor served him well when pitted against such comparatively pint-sized comedians as the Marx Bros. (in Go West). When not intimidating one and all with his muscle power, the actor was fond of playing roles that called for quaint, colorful accents, notably his Lionel Barrymore-ish turn as a suicidal baron in the 1934 Grand Hotel derivation Wonder Bar. Robert H. Barrat's last film appearance was in the rugged western Tall Man Riding (55).

Trivia: In the first ten years of his life, Raymond Burr moved from town to town with his mother, a single parent who supported her little family by playing the organ in movie houses and churches. An unusually large child, he was able to land odd jobs that would normally go to adults. He worked as a ranch hand, a traveling tinted-photograph salesman, a Forest service fire guard, and a property agent in China, where his mother had briefly resettled. At 19, he made the acquaintance of film director Anatole Litvak, who arranged for Burr to get a job at a Toronto summer-stock theater. This led to a stint with a touring English rep company; one of his co-workers, Annette Sutherland, became his first wife. After a brief stint as a nightclub singer in Paris, Burr studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and took adult education courses at Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Chunking. His first New York theatrical break was in the 1943 play Duke in Darkness. That same year, his wife Sutherland was killed in the same plane crash that took the life of actor Leslie Howard. Distraught after the death of his wife, Burr joined the Navy, served two years, then returned to America in the company of his four-year-old son, Michael Evan Burr (Michael would die of leukemia in 1953). Told by Hollywood agents that he was overweight for movies, the 340-pound Burr spent a torturous six months living on 750 calories per day. Emerging at a trim 210 pounds, he landed his first film role, an unbilled bit as Claudette Colbert's dancing partner in Without Reservations (1946). It was in San Quentin (1946), his next film, that Burr found his true metier, as a brooding villain. He spent the next ten years specializing in heavies, menacing everyone from the Marx Brothers (1949's Love Happy) to Clark Gable (1950's Key to the City) to Montgomery Clift (1951's A Place in the Sun) to Natalie Wood (1954's A Cry in the Night). His most celebrated assignments during this period included the role of melancholy wife murderer Lars Thorwald in Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and reporter Steve Martin in the English-language scenes of the Japanese monster rally Godzilla (1956), a characterization he'd repeat three decades later in Godzilla 1985. While he worked steadily on radio and television, Burr seemed a poor prospect for series stardom, especially after being rejected for the role of Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke on the grounds that his voice was too big. In 1957, he was tested for the role of district attorney Hamilton Burger in the upcoming TV series Perry Mason. Tired of playing unpleasant secondary roles, Burr agreed to read for Burger only if he was also given a shot at the leading character. Producer Gail Patrick Jackson, who'd been courting such big names as William Holden, Fred MacMurray, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr., agreed to humor Burr by permitting him to test for both Burger and Perry Mason. Upon viewing Burr's test for the latter role, Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner jumped up, pointed at the screen, and cried "That's him!" Burr was cast as Mason on the spot, remaining with the role until the series' cancellation in 1966 and winning three Emmies along the way. Though famous for his intense powers of concentration during working hours -- he didn't simply play Perry Mason, he immersed himself in the role -- Burr nonetheless found time to indulge in endless on-set practical jokes, many of these directed at his co-star and beloved friend, actress Barbara Hale. Less than a year after Mason's demise, Burr was back at work as the wheelchair-bound protagonist of the weekly detective series Ironside, which ran from 1967 to 1975. His later projects included the short-lived TVer Kingston Confidential (1976), a sparkling cameo in Airplane 2: The Sequel (1982), and 26 two-hour Perry Mason specials, lensed between 1986 and 1993. Burr was one of the most liked and highly respected men in Hollywood. Fiercely devoted to his friends and co-workers, Burr would threaten to walk off the set whenever one of his associates was treated in a less than chivalrous manner by the producers or the network. Burr also devoted innumerable hours to charitable and humanitarian works, including his personally financed one-man tours of Korean and Vietnamese army bases, his support of two dozen foster children, and his generous financial contributions to the population of the 4,000-acre Fiji island of Naitauba, which he partly owned. Despite his unbounded generosity and genuine love of people, Burr was an intensely private person. After his divorce from his second wife and the death from cancer of his third, Burr remained a bachelor from 1955 until his death. Stricken by kidney cancer late in 1992, he insisted upon maintaining his usual hectic pace, filming one last Mason TV movie and taking an extended trip to Europe. In his last weeks, Burr refused to see anyone but his closest friends, throwing "farewell" parties to keep their spirits up. Forty-eight hours after telling his longtime friend and business partner Robert Benevides, "If I lie down, I'll die," 76-year-old Raymond Burr did just that -- dying as he'd lived, on his own terms.

Trivia: In any given circus picture made between 1938 to 1964, chances were that Eddie Marr was in the cast. Possessed of leather lungs and a slightly larcenous demeanor, Marr was the archetypal sideshow barker, as exemplified by his weekly appearance on the 1956 TVer Circus Boy. One of his rare appearances outside the big top was as composer Buddy DeSylva in the 1945 George Gershwin biopic Rhapsody in Blue. Eddie Marr also appeared frequently on radio, playing a variety of gamblers, gangsters, race track touts, city detectives, travelling salesmen and, yes, carnival barkers in such series as The Damon Runyon Theatre, The Lux Radio Theatre, The Jack Carson Show and Murder Will Out.

Trivia: American general purpose actor Arthur Space was active in films from 1940. Tall, tweedy, and usually sporting a mustache, Space played just about every kind of supporting role, from Western banker to big-city detective to jewel thief. One of his largest film roles was as the delightfully eccentric inventor Alva P. Hartley in the 1944 Laurel and Hardy vehicle The Big Noise. As busy on television as in films, Arthur Space was seen on a weekly basis as Herbert Brown, the father of horse-loving teenager Velvet Brown, in the TV series National Velvet (1960-1961).