Trivia: The son of actress Nan Kelly Yorke, Jack Kelly was the younger brother of stage and film star Nancy Kelly. Like Nancy, Jack was a professional from an early age, acting in radio and on stage before the age of 10, and in films from 1937 (he is quite prominent in a brace of 1939 20th Century-Fox films, Young Mr. Lincoln and The Story of Alexander Graham Bell). He reemerged as a leading man in the early 1950s, appearing in such films as Forbidden Planet (1956, as the ill-fated Lieutenant Farnam). Signed by Warner Bros. in 1955, Kelly starred as Dr. Paris Mitchell in the weekly TV version of the 1942 film King's Row. He went on to play gamblin' man Bart Maverick on the longer-running Warners western series Maverick. Though his popularity never matched that of his co-star James Garner, Kelly still developed a fan following as Bart; he remained with the series from 1957 until its cancellation in 1962, appearing opposite such Garner successors as Roger Moore and Robert Colbert. Kelly dabbled in a little bit of everything after that: hosting the anthology series NBC Comedy Playhouse (1973), emceeing the game show Sale of the Century (1969-71), and playing hard-nosed Lt. Ryan on the Teresa Graves series Get Christie Love (1974) and Harry Hammond on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (1977-79). He revived the Bart Maverick character on 1978's The New Maverick and the 1990 TV movie The Gambler Returns: Luck of the Draw. Chances are that, had he lived, Jack Kelly would have been invited to co-star again with Garner in the 1994 Mel Gibson theatrical-feature version of Maverick.

Trivia: Perhaps better known to the general public as an actor, John Cassavetes' true artistic legacy derives from his work behind the camera; arguably, he was America's first truly independent filmmaker, an iconoclastic maverick whose movies challenged the assumptions of the cinematic form. Obsessed with bringing to the screen the "small feelings" he believed that American society at large attempted to suppress, Cassavetes' work emphasized his actors above all else, favoring character examination over traditional narrative storytelling to explore the realities of the human condition. A pioneer of self-financing and self-distribution, he led the way for filmmakers to break free of Hollywood control, perfecting an improvisational, cinéma vérité aesthetic all his own.The son of Greek immigrants, Cassavetes was born December 9, 1929, in New York City. After attending public school on Long Island, he later studied English at both Mohawk College and Colgate University prior to enrolling at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts. Upon graduating in 1950, he signed on with a Rhode Island stock company while attempting to land roles on Broadway and made his film debut in Gregory Ratoff's Taxi in 1953. A series of television roles followed, with Cassavetes frequently typecast as a troubled youth. By 1955, he was playing similar parts in the movies, appearing in pictures ranging from Night Holds Terror to Crime in the Streets. Cassavetes' career as a filmmaker began most unexpectedly. In 1957, he was appearing on Night People, a New York-based radio show, to promote his recent performance in the Martin Ritt film Edge of the City. While talking with host Jean Shepherd, Cassavetes abruptly announced that he felt the film was a disappointment and claimed he could make a better movie himself; at the close of the program, he challenged listeners interested in an alternative to Hollywood formulas to send in a dollar or two to fund his aspirations, promising he would make "a movie about people." No one was more surprised than Cassavetes himself when, over the course of the next several days, the radio station received over 2,000 dollars in dollar bills and loose change; true to his word, he began production within the week, despite having no idea exactly what kind of film he wanted to make.Assembling a group of students from his acting workshop, Cassavetes began work on what was later titled Shadows. The production had no script or professional crew, only rented lights and a 16 mm camera. Without any prior experience behind the camera, Cassavetes and his cast made mistake after mistake, resulting in a soundtrack which rendered the actors' dialogue completely inaudible (consequently creating a three-year delay in release while a new soundtrack was dubbed). A sprawling, wholly improvised piece about a family of black Greenwich Village jazz musicians -- the oldest brother dark-skinned, the younger brother and sister light enough to pass for white -- the film staked out the kind of fringe society to which Cassavetes' work would consistently return, posing difficult questions about love and identity.Unable to find an American distributor, the completed Shadows appeared in 1960, and was widely hailed as a groundbreaking accomplishment. After receiving the Critics Award at that year's Venice Film Festival, it finally was released in the U.S. with the backing of a British distributor. The film's success brought Cassavetes to the attention of Paramount, who hired him to direct the 1961 drama Too Late Blues with Bobby Darin. The movie was a financial and critical disaster, and he was quickly dropped from his contract. Landing at United Artists, he directed A Child Is Waiting for producer Stanley Kramer. After the two men had a falling out, Cassavetes was removed from the project, which Kramer then drastically re-cut, prompting a bitter Cassavetes to wash his hands of the finished product. Stung by his experiences as a Hollywood filmmaker, he vowed to thereafter finance and control his own work, turning away from directing for several years to earn the money necessary to fund his endeavors. A string of acting jobs in films ranging from Don Siegel's The Killers to Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby to Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen (for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor) wrapped up Cassavetes for all of the mid-'60s, but in 1968 he returned to filmmaking with Faces, the first of his pictures to star his wife, the brilliant actress Gena Rowlands. Another edgy drama shot in Cassavetes' trademark cinéma vérité style, Faces was a tremendous financial and critical success, garnering a pair of Oscar nominations as well as winning five awards at the Venice Film Festival; its success again brought Hollywood calling, but this time the director entertained only those offers affording him absolute creative control and final cut.After coming to terms with Columbia, Cassavetes began work on 1970's Husbands, which co-starred Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. After helming 1971's Minnie and Moskowitz for Universal, he turned to self-financing, creating his masterpiece A Woman Under the Influence, which earned Rowlands an Academy Award nomination in the Best Actress category. With a story he developed with longtime fan Martin Scorsese, Cassavetes next turned to 1976's film noir The Killing of a Chinese Bookie; though also reissued two years later in a truncated version, the picture failed to find an audience, and was barely even circulated. When the same fate befell 1978's Opening Night, Cassavetes was forced to return to Columbia in 1980 to make Gloria.Four years passed before the director's next film, Love Streams. His subsequent effort was 1985's aptly titled Big Trouble, a comedy already in production when Cassavetes took over for writer/director Andrew Bergman, who had abruptly quit the project. The finished film was subsequently recut by its producers, and Cassavetes publicly declared it a disaster. Upon completing the picture, he became ill; regardless, he continued working, turning to the theatrical stage when he could no longer find funding for his films. A Woman of Mystery, a three-act play which was his final fully realized work, premiered in Los Angeles in 1987. On February 3, 1989, John Cassavetes died. Son Nick continued in his father's footsteps, working as an actor as well as the director of the films Unhook the Stars (1996) and She's So Lovely (1997), the latter an adaptation of one of his father's unfilmed screenplays.

Trivia: The youngest of the seven children of a Brooklyn contractor, Vince Edwards left vocational school when he won an athletic scholarship to Ohio State University. He subsequently gave up college to attend New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After working as a chorus boy in the Broadway musical High Button Shoes, Edwards fell under the spell of the then-fashionable "Method" school of acting: "whoever had the dirtiest outfit was top man on Broadway," he would later comment. Edwards tended to be cast on the basis of his physique rather than his acting ability in such films as Mr. Universe (1951) and Hiawatha (1952). After ten years of film roles of varying quality, Edwards was starred in the television series Ben Casey (1961-66), rapidly developing a reputation as "TV's surly surgeon." Toward the end of the Casey run, Edwards began dabbling in directing, an activity that he has pursued ever since. Later projects involving Vince Edwards have included the brief 1970 TV series Matt Lincoln, an attempt to establish himself as a nightclub singer, and a voiceover stint for the TV cartoon daily The Centurions.

Trivia: Irreverent comedian and social commentator David Cross has maintained a relatively low celebrity profile while at the same time working consistently in TV, film, and the live performance circuit, endearing himself to legions of fans. His smart and fearless comedy style is marked by a simultaneous honesty and cynicism that kind of goes beyond satire to somewhere else. His solo work tends to focus on topics of religion, politics, and a total refusal to skirt around any issue. Characterized by his small frame, bald head, and black glasses, his major career accomplishment has been as one-half of the HBO series Mr. Show with Bob and David. However, his memorable bit parts (Donnie, the guy who repeatedly says "Chicken Pot Pie" on NBC's Just Shoot Me) tend to stick in the imagination of the larger public. Born in Atlanta, GA, he went to college in Boston and started doing stand-up comedy before moving out to Los Angeles. He met Bob Odenkirk while working as a writer for The Ben Stiller Show on HBO and the two joined forces to create the unique sketch comedy series Mr. Show in 1995. With Odenkirk and Cross as the original funders, writers, actors, and executive producers, the show was nominated for several Emmy awards and eventually ended in 1998. Cross made several notable TV guest appearances on The Drew Carey Show and News Radio, as well as movies like Men in Black, The Cable Guy, Ghost World, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Waiting for Guffman. As a voice actor, he worked on the Hercules animated TV series, the feature films Small Soldiers and Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: Chipwrecked. Cross also continued to appear live on-stage in various formats (often with indie pop-rockers Ultrababyfat), wrote columns for magazines, and did a Mr. Show tour with Odenkirk. In November 2002, Cross released a two-disc comedy album, Shut Up You Fucking Baby!, consisting of highly charged political rants and other solo material recorded live in concert. Cross had a particularly memorable part on the beloved comedy series Arrested Development, and would later return to the small screen, writing and starring in The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret.

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: Husky, bushy-mustached, frequently unkempt Canadian actor Jack Kruschen appeared steadily on radio from 1938 onward. He began playing small film roles in 1949, often cast as minor villains and braying bullies. He became a cult favorite after playing one of the three earliest victims (the Hispanic one) of the Martian death ray in George Pal's War of the Worlds (1953). His larger film roles included MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer in the Carol Lynley version of Harlow (1965), and the remonstrative physician neighbor of Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960); the latter assignment copped a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nomination for Kruschen. A tireless TV performer, Kruschen has guested in a variety of roles on most of the top video offerings, and was a regular in the 1977 sitcom Busting Loose, playing the father of Adam Arkin. Relatively inactive after 1980, Jack Kruschen made a welcome return in PBS' 1993 adaptation of Arthur Miller's The American Clock.

Trivia: Once Canadian-born actor Jonathan Hale became well known for his portrayal of well-to-do businessmen, he was fond of telling the story of how he'd almost been a man of wealth in real life--except for an improvident financial decision by his father. A minor diplomat before he turned to acting, Hale began appearing in minor film roles in 1934, showing up fleetingly in such well-remembered films as the Karloff/Lugosi film The Raven (1935), the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera (1935) and the first version of A Star is Born (1937). In 1938, Hale was cast as construction executive J. C. Dithers in Blondie, the first of 28 "B"-pictures based on Chic Young's popular comic strip. Though taller and more distinguished-looking than the gnomelike Dithers of the comics, Hale became instantly synonymous with the role, continuing to portray the character until 1946's Blondie's Lucky Day (his voice was heard in the final film of the series, Beware of Blondie, though that film's on-camera Dithers was Edward Earle). During this same period, Hale also appeared regularly as Irish-brogued Inspector Fernack in RKO's "The Saint" series. After 1946, Hale alternated between supporting roles and bits, frequently unbilled (e.g. Angel on My Shoulder, Call Northside 777 and Son of Paleface); he had a pivotal role as Robert Walker's hated father in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951), though the part was confined to a smidgen of dialogue and a single long-shot. Hale worked prolifically in television in the '50s, with substantial guest roles in such series as Disneyland and The Adventures of Superman. In 1966, after a long illness, Jonathan Hale committed suicide at the age of 75, just months before the TV release of the Blondie films that had won him prominence in the '30s and '40s.