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: G. Gordon Liddy first gained attention for his involvement in the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard M. Nixon's resignation. He was convicted and spent several years in jail. Afterwards, he wrote an autobiography, Will, and served as a technical consultant when it was filmed. He first appeared as an actor in the made-for-TV thriller The Highwayman (1987), after which he gained substantial popularity as a guest star on the hit series Miami Vice. For several years, Liddy hosted a Washington, D.C.-based radio talk show on station WJFK.

Trivia: Though best known as the jovial but lovably sarcastic host of the American talk show sensation Live with Regis and Kelly (and its earlier incarnation, Live With Regis and Kathie Lee), television personality Regis Philbin (born August 25th 1931) has sustained an astonishingly varied career that bridges not only a myriad of broadcast formats -- from daytime and late-night talk to game shows to televised parades and news magazines -- but multiple mediums as well, including books, feature films, and even musical recordings that found Philbin crooning along to old standards. A native New Yorker, Philbin grew up in the South Bronx and later graduated from the University of Notre Dame. After a stint in the Navy and a series of entry-level jobs in Hollywood, he hosted the talk programs The Regis Philbin Show (on KGTV in San Diego) and Philbin's People in Los Angeles, and developed a revolutionary style of televised chat that involved peppering his commentary with witty asides and opinions, and involving the audience in the on-set conversation. In time, Philbin secured a spot as co-host on the late-night talk program The Joey Bishop Show from April 1967 to December 1969. During the 1970s, Philbin hosted the morning talk show Temp on Los Angeles's KHJ-TV, and emceed two game shows on ABC. In 1983, he launched The Morning Show, a local talk program in New York City; it eventually evolved into Live With Regis and Kathie Lee in 1985, after Kathie Lee Gifford signed on as co-host. That program, of course, became a national institution, and continued even after Gifford left, with Kelly Ripa replacing her as co-host. During the late '90s, Philbin also made television history by emceeing one of the most lucrative game shows in the history of the broadcast medium: the U.K. import Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, on ABC.Cinematically, Philbin made a number of cameo film appearances in various Hollywood features over the years -- often, though not always, playing himself. These included the uproarious 1972 Woody Allen film-a-sketch Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask (as one of the panelists on a perverted game show), and the awful Mae West 1978 musical Sextette (as a reporter). Regis and second wife Joy Philbin lent darkly amusing cameos as themselves to the Irwin Winkler-directed psychological drama Night and the City (1992) -- in which they appear as restaurant patrons, hounded by obnoxious flim-flam man Harry Fabian (Robert De Niro). In the early 2000s, Philbin's film appearances included cameos in Little Nicky and Cheaper by the Dozen, and a small role in Shrek the Third, as the voice of Mabel, one of Cinderella's ugly stepsisters.The entertainer reprised his voice role in Shrek Forever After in 2010. Philbin announced his departure from LIVE! With Regis and Kelly during an emotional episode in February of 2011.

Trivia: Baltimore native Montel Williams clocked in as one of the frontrunners of sensationalistic daytime talk during the late '80s and '90s. At the time of his ascent to celebrity, Williams had previously essayed careers as a naval intelligence officer and a motivational speaker for adolescents. His talk program, The Montel Williams Show, debuted in 1991 to stellar ratings and continually escalating audiences -- a run that extended unabated through the late 2000s. The format of the program bore an identical resemblance to those of such forerunners as Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey, and others; it entailed honing in on guests with troubled pasts and help them resolve issues on the air. Williams' resumé also includes acting roles in such films as The Peacekeeper (1997) and Noon Blue Apples (2002).

Trivia: Never the typical ingénue, American actress Mariette Hartley was distinguished by attractively offbeat facial features and a full, throaty voice -- acting tools that enabled her to play a wide spectrum of ages and personalities even when she was barely out of her teens. The granddaughter of behavioral psychologist John B. Watson, Hartley began her training at Carnegie Tech, then studied acting under Eva LeGalleine . Shakespeare was Hartley's forte in her salad days; thus, she was a full-blown professional before the age of 21. Hartley's first film, Ride the High Country (1961), may well have been her best; as the runaway bride of a mentally deficient mountain man, Hartley was permitted to forego cutesiness and glamour, spending most of the film in dusty male western garb. She was so good in this first appearance that MGM literally had no idea what to do with her; the solution was to cast her as a garden-variety damsel in distress in Drums of Africa (1963), which Hartley now regards as her worst film (and it is -- far worse than the more obvious candidate, 1971's The Return of Count Yorga). Then as now, Hartley was better served on TV than in films. Appearing with regularity on such programs as Twilight Zone and Bonanza, Hartley exuded an intelligence and versatility rare in so young an actress. She gained a following with her recurring role on the nighttime soapera Peyton Place (1965), then provided the only bright moments of the misfire satirical sitcom The Hero (1966), in which she played the wife of a bumbling TV cowboy (Richard Mulligan). Her TV work load increased in the '70s, during which time she appeared as futuristic heroine Lyra-a in Gene Roddenberry's TV pilot Genesis II, a role which gained a great deal of press attention due to Hartley's exotic midriff makeup (her character was endowed with two navels). She also won an Emmy for her appearance in a 1978 installment of The Incredible Hulk. A popular talk-show raconteur, Hartley was able to parlay her no-nonsense persona into a series of lucrative camera commercials, in which she co-starred with James Garner. Her easy rapport with Garner led many to believe that she was married to the Rockford Files star, compelling her to make public appearances wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the message "I am NOT Mrs. James Garner" (she was, in fact, married to producer/director Patrick Boyriven). Her high audience "Q" rating led certain TV producers to believe that Hartley would be ideally cast as a news reporter on the 1983 sitcom Goodnight, Beantown. The casting was good, the show wasn't. Nor were follow-ups in this vein, including a foredoomed hitch as co-host of the 1987 revamping of CBS Morning News titled The Morning Program and the very short-lived newsroom-oriented weekly drama WIOU (1990). That the actress took to kidding about her many TV failures only added to her upbeat public image -- an image which masked a surfeit of grief brought on by the alcoholism and suicide of Hartley's father, which formed the basis of her 1990 book Breaking the Silence. Audiences were able to see this serious side of Mariette Hartley in her frequent TV-movie appearances, notably her performance as grieving mother Candy Lightner in M.A.D.D.: Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Mariette Hartley remained busy on films and in television into the '90s; once again, the TV work was more rewarding than the movie assignments, which included such negligible entertainments as Encino Man (1992).

Trivia: According to her Rockford, Illinois, high-school yearbook, Barbara Hale hoped to make a career for herself as a commercial artist. Instead, she found herself posing for artists as a professional model. This led to a movie contract at RKO Radio, where she worked her way up from "B"s like The Falcon in Hollywood (1945) to such top-of-the-bill attractions as A Likely Story (1947) and The Boy With Green Hair (1949). She continued to enjoy star billing at Columbia, where among other films she essayed the title role in Lorna Doone (1952). Her popularity dipped a bit in the mid-1950s, but she regained her following in the Emmy-winning role of super-efficient legal secretary Della Street on the Perry Mason TV series. She played Della on a weekly basis from 1957 through 1966, and later appeared in the irregularly scheduled Perry Mason two-hour TV movies of the 1980s and 1990s. The widow of movie leading man Bill Williams, Barbara Hale was the mother of actor/director William Katt. Hale died in 2017, at age 94.