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 Hollywood's most luminous actresses, Gene Tierney remains best remembered for her performance in the title role of the 1944 mystery classic Laura. Born November 20, 1920, in Brooklyn, NY, Tierney was the daughter of a wealthy insurance broker, and was educated in Connecticut and Switzerland; she traveled in social circles, and at a party met Anatole Litvak, who was so stunned by her beauty that he requested she screen test at Warner Bros. The studio offered a contract, but the salary was so low that her parents dissuaded her from signing; instead, Tierney pursued a stage career, making her Broadway debut in 1938's Mrs. O'Brien Entertains. A six-month contract was then offered by Columbia, which she accepted. However, after the studio failed to find her a project, she returned to New York to star on-stage in The Male Animal. The lead in MGM's National Velvet was offered her, but when the project was delayed Tierney signed with Fox, where in 1940 she made her film debut opposite Henry Fonda in the Fritz Lang Western The Return of Frank James.A small role in Hudson's Bay followed before Tierney essayed her first major role in John Ford's 1940 drama Tobacco Road. She then starred as the titular Belle Starr. Fox remained impressed with her skills, but critics consistently savaged her work. Inexplicably and wholly inappropriately, she was cast as a native girl in three consecutive features: Sundown, The Shanghai Gesture, and Son of Fury. Closer to home was 1942's Thunder Birds, in which Tierney starred as a socialite; however, she was just as quickly returned to more exotic fare later that same year for China Girl. A supporting turn in Ernst Lubitsch's classic 1943 comedy Heaven Can Wait signalled an upward turn in Tierney's career, however, and the following year she starred as the enigmatic Laura in Otto's Preminger's masterful mystery. After 1945's A Bell for Adano, she next appeared as a femme fatale in the melodrama Leave Her to Heaven, a performance which won her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination -- her most successful film to date.Tierney continued working at a steady pace, and in 1946 co-starred with Tyrone Power in an adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel The Razor's Edge. The 1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was her last major starring role; from 1948's The Iron Curtain onward, she appeared primarily in smaller supporting performances in projects including the 1949 thriller Whirlpool and Jules Dassin's classic 1950 noir Night and the City. After 1952's Way of a Gaucho, Tierney's Fox contract expired, and at MGM she starred with Spencer Tracy in Plymouth Adventure, followed by the Clark Gable vehicle Never Let Me Go. The latter was filmed in Britain, and she remained there to shoot Personal Affair. While in Europe, Tierney also began a romance with Aly Khan, but their marriage plans were met by fierce opposition from the Aga Khan; dejectedly she returned to the U.S., where she appeared in 1954's Black Widow.After 1955's The Left Hand of God, Tierney's long string of personal troubles finally took their toll, and she left Hollywood and relocated to the Midwest, accepting a job in a small department store; there she was rediscovered in 1959, and Fox offered her a lead role in the film Holidays for Lovers. However, the stress of performing proved too great, and days into production Tierney quit to return to the clinic. In 1960 she married Texas oil baron Howard Lee. Two years later, Fox announced her for the lead role in Return to Peyton Place, but she became pregnant and dropped out of the project. Finally, Tierney returned to screens in 1962's Advise and Consent, followed a year later by Toys in the Attic. After 1964's The Pleasure Seekers, she again retired, but in 1969 starred in the TV movie Daughter of the Mind. Remaining out of the public eye for the next decade, in 1979 Tierney published an autobiography, Self-Portrait, and in 1980 appeared in the miniseries Scruples; the performance was her last -- she died in Houston on November 6, 1991.

Trivia: A rugged, craggy-faced, bushy-browed lead actor and character player, he began his stage career in 1937, which was interrupted by service in World War Two. He debuted onscreen in Winged Victory (1944), but did not begin regularly appearing in films until 1949; he was usually cast as grim, determined, humorless men in action features. From 1950-60 he was married to actress Bette Davis, with whom he appeared in three films. His many TV credits include a role in the series Young Dr. Kildare. He was politically active in liberal causes, and played a part in rejuvenating Maine's Democratic party; he also helped elect Edmund Muskie to governor of that state in 1953. In 1965 he took part in the Selma-Montgomery civil rights march. At odds with President Johnson's Vietnam policy, he switched parties and in 1968 tried unsuccessfully to win a Republican nomination to the Maine legislature as an anti-war, pro-environmentalist primary candidate. He authored an autobiography, Bette, Rita and the Rest of My Life (1989); "Rita" refers to actress Rita Hayworth, with whom he'd had a romantic affair.

Trivia: Craig Stevens abandoned all plans for a career in dentistry when he became involved in student productions at the University of Kansas. Trained at Pasadena Playhouse and Paramount's acting school, Stevens was signed to a stock Warner Bros. contract in 1941. He was well showcased as a soft-hearted gangster in At the Stroke of Twelve, a 1941 two-reel adaptation of Damon Runyon's The Old Doll's House, but his feature film roles were merely adequate at best. By 1950, Stevens was reduced to playing a standard mustachioed villain in the Bowery Boys epic Blues Busters. His saving turnaround came about when Stevens was cast in the title role of the 1958 Blake Edwards-produced TV private eye series Peter Gunn. Though obviously imitating Cary Grant in the early episodes of this three-season hit, Stevens eventually developed a hard-edged acting style all his own. He later re-created his TV role in the 1967 theatrical feature Gunn. Subsequent TV-series assignments for Stevens included the British-filmed weekly Man of the World (1962) and CBS' Mr. Broadway (1964). Craig Stevens was married to actress Alexis Smith (with whom he toured in such stage productions as Critic's Choice) from 1944 until her death in 1993.

Trivia: Character actor Bert Freed prepared for his theatrical career at Penn State. Freed made his first Broadway appearance in the forgotten 1942 production Johnny 2 X 4, then went on to such long-running efforts as Counterattack, One Touch of Venus and Annie Get Your Gun. In films from 1947, he was most often cast as big-city detectives and small-town sheriffs. Some of his more memorable movie roles include Sgt. Boulanger in Paths of Glory (1957), Christopher Jones' institutionalized father in Wild in the Streets (1968), and all-around meanie Stuart Posner in Billy Jack (1969). A busy television actor, Freed settled down to a weekly-series grind only once, as Rufe Ryker on the 1966 video version of Shane. Outside of his performing activities, Bert Freed was for many years a member of the Motion Picture Academy's Committee of Foreign Films.

Trivia: Unable to meet the exacting academic requirements of the Naval Academy, Colorado-born Tom Tully entered the service branch of his choice as a common seaman. Following this, Tully worked as a junior reporter for the Denver Post. He decided to become a radio actor simply because the money was better. After several theatrical flops, Tully managed to hitch himself to a success with Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness. In 1944, he arrived in Hollywood to appear in I'll Be Seeing You. Among his many tough-but-tender screen characterizations was the role of the first commander of the "Caine" in 1954's The Caine Mutiny, a performance which earned Tully an Oscar nomination. From 1954 through 1960, Tom Tully essayed the role of Inspector Matt Grebb on the TV detective series Lineup (aka San Francisco Beat).

Trivia: The son of Yugoslav immigrants, Karl Malden labored in the steel mills of Gary, Indiana before enrolling in Arkansas State Teachers College. While not a prime candidate for stardom with his oversized nose and bullhorn voice, Malden attended Chicago's Goodman Dramatic School, then moved to New York, where he made his Broadway bow in 1937. Three years later he made his film debut in a microscopic role in They Knew What They Wanted (1940), which also featured another star-to-be, Tom Ewell. While serving in the Army Air Force during World War II, Malden returned to films in the all-serviceman epic Winged Victory (1944), where he was billed as Corporal Karl Malden. This led to a brief contract with 20th Century-Fox -- but not to Hollywood, since Malden's subsequent film appearances were lensed on the east coast. In 1947, Malden created the role of Mitch, the erstwhile beau of Blanche Dubois, in Tennessee Williams' Broadway play A Streetcar Named Desire; he repeated the role in the 1951 film version, winning an Oscar in the process. For much of his film career, Malden has been assigned roles that called for excesses of ham; even his Oscar-nominated performance in On the Waterfront (1954) was decidedly "Armour Star" in concept and execution. In 1957, he directed the Korean War melodrama Time Limit, the only instance in which the forceful and opinionated Malden was officially credited as director. Malden was best known to TV fans of the 1970s as Lieutenant Mike Stone, the no-nonsense protagonist of the longrunning cop series The Streets of San Francisco. Still wearing his familiar Streets hat and overcoat, Malden supplemented his income with a series of ads for American Express. His commercial catchphrases "What will you do?" and "Don't leave home without it!" soon entered the lexicon of TV trivia -- and provided endless fodder for such comedians as Johnny Carson. From 1989-92, Malden served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Trivia: The daughter of a New Jersey newspaper reporter/ critic/ editor, Ruth Donnelly made her first stage appearance at 17, in the chorus of the touring show The Quaker Girl. Shortly afterward, she essayed the first of hundreds of comedy roles in a theatrical piece called Margie Pepper. Her Broadway debut occurred in 1914's A Scrap of Paper, which brought her to the attention of showman George M. Cohan, who cast Ruth in choice comic-relief roles for the next five years. Her first film was 1927's Rubber Heels, but Ruth didn't pursue a Hollywood career until the Wall Street crash reduced her opportunities in "live" theatre. From 1932's Blessed Event onward, Ruth was one of Tinseltown's favorite wisecracking matrons, brightening many a sagging scene in such films as Wonder Bar (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). She was proudest of her performance as a lively middle-aged nun in Leo McCarey's The Bells of St. Mary's; unfortunately, most of that performance ended up on the cutting-room floor. Closing out her film career with Autumn Leaves (1956) and her stage career with The Riot Act (1963), Ruth Donnelly retired to a Manhattan residential hotel, politely but firmly refusing all offers to appear in TV commercials and soap operas.

Trivia: The oldest child of an itinerant bridge builder, actor Neville Brand intended to make the military his career, and indeed spent ten years in uniform. During World War II, he became America's fourth most decorated soldier when he wiped out a German 50-caliber machine gun nest. He also decided that he'd seek out another line of work as soon as his hitch was up. Paying for acting classes with his GI Bill, he started his career off-Broadway. In 1949, he made his film debut in D.O.A., playing a psychotic hoodlum who delights in punching poisoned hero Edmond O'Brien in the stomach. Brand spent most of the early '50s at 20th Century Fox, a studio that surprisingly downplayed the actor's war record by shuttling him from one unstressed supporting role to another (though he's the principal villain in 1950's Where the Sidewalk Ends, he receives no screen credit). He fared far better on television, where he won the Sylvania Award for his portrayal of Huey Long in a 1958 telestaging of All the King's Men. Even better received was his portrayal of Al Capone on the TV series The Untouchables, a characterization he repeated in the 1961 theatrical feature The George Raft Story. In 1966, Brand briefly shed his bad-guy image to play the broadly hilarious role of bumbling Texas Ranger Reese Bennett on the TV Western series Laredo. His off-camera reputation for pugnacity and elbow-bending was tempered by his unswerving loyalty to his friends and his insatiable desire to better himself intellectually (his private library was one of the largest in Hollywood, boasting some 5000 titles). Fighting a losing battle against emphysema during his last years, Neville Brand died at the age of 70.

Trivia: American character actor Lou Krugman appeared in a few feature films from the late '50s through the early '60s including I Want to Live! (1958) but may be best known for his work on radio. He is said to have appeared on over 10,000 broadcasts and did over 700 voiceovers for television commercials.

Trivia: Flint-eyed American character actor Ian MacDonald began appearing in films in 1941. The war interrupted MacDonald's screen career, but he was back at his post in 1947. Nearly always a villain on-screen, his most celebrated role was Frank Miller, the vindictive gunman who motivates the plot of High Noon (1952). Likewise memorable were his portrayals of Bo Creel in White Heat (1949) and Geronimo in Taza, Son of Cochise (1954). In films until 1959, Ian MacDonald also occasionally dabbled in screenwriting.

Trivia: For over six decades, Louise Lorimer played character roles on stage, screen and television. She launched her career on Broadway, appearing in I Remember Mama opposite Marlon Brando. Lorimer later worked on My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison. Lorimer made her feature-film debut in Gangster's Boy (1938). She subsequently appeared steadily in feature films through the late 1970s. Her television work includes appearances on Profiles in Courage and Marnie. She also frequently appeared on the Alfred Hitchcock anthology series Hitchcock Presents and on the sitcom Dennis the Menace. On Hopalong Cassidy, Lorimer occasionally played "Stagecoach Sal." Lorimer graduated from the Leland Powers School of Drama in Boston. She served in the USO during WW II. Later in her career, Lorimer became a teacher at the Martha's Vineyard branch of the Leland Powers School of Drama.

Trivia: Starting his Hollywood career in or around 1951, American actor Robert Foulk was alternately passive and authoritative in such westerns as Last of the Badmen (1957), The Tall Stranger (1957), The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and Cast a Long Shadow (1958). He remained a frontiersmen for his year-long stint as bartender Joe Kingston on the Joel McCrea TV shoot-em-up Wichita Town (1959) (though he reverted to modern garb as the Anderson family's next-door neighbor in the '50s sitcom Father Knows Best). In non-westerns, Foulk usually played professional men, often uniformed. Some of his parts were fleeting enough not to have any designation but "character bit" (vide The Love Bug [1968]), but otherwise there was no question Foulk was in charge: as a doctor in Tammy and the Doctor (1963), a police official in Bunny O'Hare (1971) or a railroad conductor in Emperor of the North (1973). Robert Foulk was given extensive screen time in the Bowery Boys' Hold That Hypnotist (1957), as the title character; and in Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), playing straight as Sheriff Glick opposite such "Merrie Men" as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin Sammy Davis Jr. and Bing Crosby.

Trivia: A distinguished member of Broadway's famed Group Theater, with whom he appeared in Casey Jones (1938) and Night Music (1940), Clancy Cooper entered films with Warner Bros. in 1941. But despite his distinctive theater pedigree, Cooper's busy screen career proved middling at best and he mainly played bit roles. A notable exception came in the 1944 serial Haunted Harbor, as one of hero Kane Richmond's two sidekicks. A veteran of more than 100 feature films, the veteran actor went on to also embrace television, appearing in over 200 episodes in shows such as The Lone Ranger, Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Gunsmoke, Twilight Zone, Maverick, Dr. Kildare, and The Wild Wild West. Married to novelist Elizabeth Cooper, Clancy Cooper died of a heart attack while driving in Hollywood.

Trivia: Moon-faced American character actor Ralph Peters was active in films from 1937 to 1956. At first, Peters showed up in Westerns, usually cast as a bartender. He then moved on to contemporary films, usually cast as a bartender. During the 1940s, Ralph Peters could be seen in scores of Runyon-esque gangster roles like Asthma Anderson in Ball of Fire (1941) and Baby Face Peterson in My Kingdom for a Cook (1943).

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from 1937.

Trivia: American actress Kathleen Hughes was recruited right out of UCLA to be a contract actress at 20th Century-Fox. After several years of thankless bits, Kathleen signed at Universal, where she flourished in supporting parts as seductresses and mystery women. The actress was right in her element in The Glass Web (1953), in which she is murdered by jealous TV writer Edward G. Robinson, who then fashions a script based on the crime! Kathleen Hughes retired upon her marriage to producer Stanley Rubin, making a brief comeback in 1967's The President's Analyst.

Trivia: In films from the early 1930s, Fred Graham was one of Hollywood's busiest stunt men and stunt coordinators. A fixture of the Republic serial unit in the 1940s and 1950s, Graham was occasionally afforded a speaking part, usually as a bearded villain. His baseball expertise landed him roles in films like Death on the Diamond (1934), Angels in the Outfield (1951) and The Pride of St. Louis (1952). He was also prominently featured in several John Wayne vehicles, including She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Fighting Kentuckian (1949), The Horse Soldiers (1959) and The Alamo (1960). After retiring from films, Fred Graham served as director of the Arizona Motion Pictures Development Office.

Trivia: Inaugurating his career at the Cleveland Playhouse, American character actor Robert F. Simon made his first Broadway appearance in Clifford Odets' Clash By Night. In 1949, Simon succeeded Lee J. Cobb in the role of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. He made his film debut in 1954, spending the next two decades playing a steady stream of generals, doctors, executives and journalists. One of Simon's most prominent film roles was the father of the title character in 1956's The Benny Goodman Story. On television, Simon played bombastic newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson in the weekly adventure series The Amazing Spider-Man (1977-78), and could also be seen in recurring roles on Saints and Sinners (1961), Bewitched (1964), Custer (1967), Nancy (1970) and MASH (1972-73 season, as General Mitchell).