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: Manchester native David Warner supported himself as a book salesman while studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Warner made his stage bow at the Royal Court Theater in 1962, the same year that he first appeared on television. In 1965, Warner became the youngest-ever member of the Royal Shakespeare Company to tackle the role of Hamlet. In films from 1963 (he played Master Blifil in Tom Jones), Warner achieved international fame for his star turn as the certifiably insane protagonist of Morgan! (1966). His appearance as the village idiot in Straw Dogs (1971) went uncredited due to an injury that rendered him uninsurable on the set; but this was the only time that Warner's contribution to a film would ever go unofficially unheralded. Seldom settling for a normal, sedate characterization, Warner has been seen as Jack the Ripper in Time After Time (1981), the Evil Genius in Time Bandits (1983), Dr. Alfred Necessiter (who had some interior decorator!) in The Man With Two Brains (1984), and genially eccentric Professor Jordan Perry (a good guy, for a change) in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 (1992). He has also played two different roles in two consecutive Star Trek films. On television, David Warner has played Heydrich in Holocaust (1978), Pomponius Falco (a performance that won him an Emmy) in Masada (1981), and Bob Cratchit (what-not Scrooge?) in the 1984 adaptation of A Christmas Carol.

Trivia: Actress Morgan Fairchild was born Patsy McClenny, the daughter of an engineer father and high-school teacher mother. At age 14, she competed for the Miss Teenage Dallas crown by performing a scene from St. Joan (she lost). After a brief marriage, McClenny set her cap on professional show business; she chose the stage name "Morgan" from the 1966 British film of same name and "Fairchild" because it sounded nice. After a few seasons on the New York stage, Morgan Fairchild was cast as the truculent Jennifer Phillips on the Manhattan-based TV serial Search for Tomorrow. From there, she headed to LA, where, despite not having an agent or any tangible connections, she landed a TV job in less than two months. Briefly cast as Jenna Wade on the prime-time series Dallas, Fairchild chose not to be tied down to dramatics (at least not yet) and polished her comedy skills with several sitcom guest spots. She then was cast in her first starring TV role, as Constance Semple on the 1981 series Flamingo Road. After the series ran its course, Fairchild delivered a well-received star performance in the 1982 Broadway play Geniuses. Later series-TV assignments included the role of testy model agency owner Racine on Paper Dolls (1984) and the scheming Jordan Roberts on Falcon Crest (1985-86). Fairchild's TV-movie and miniseries credits include Honey Boy (1982), North and South, Book 2 (1986), and a return to comedy in The Zany Adventures of Robin Hood (1985). Morgan Fairchild's theatrical film work has been by and large unremarkable, save for an amusing extended cameo in 1985's Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.

Trivia: A radio performer from the age of 14, Polly Bergen went the summer stock-nightclub route before heading for Hollywood in 1949. During her first months in the entertainment capitol, Bergen married actor Jerome Courtland, a union that was over virtually before it began; her later marriage to agent Freddie Fields endured for nearly 20 years. Though she could take some pride in having survived three Martin and Lewis films (At War With the Army, That's My Boy and The Stooge), Bergen chafed at the nondescript movie parts being offered her, and in 1953 walked out of a very lucrative studio contract. She headed for New York, where, while headlining in the Broadway revue John Murray Anderson's Almanac, she strained her voice and was forced to undergo a painful throat operation. Another serious career set-back occurred in 1959 when, while starring in the musical First Impressions, she nearly lost her life during a difficult pregnancy. Gamely surviving these and other personal travails, Bergen rose to stardom via her stage performance, her one-woman cabaret act, and her many TV appearances, notably her Emmy-winning turn in The Helen Morgan Story (1957). In 1962, she gave films a second chance when she played a North Carolina housewife threatened with rape by rampaging ex-con Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear (1962) (over 20 years later, she and Mitchum played husband and wife in the popular TV miniseries The Winds of War and War and Remembrance). Her bravura portrayal of a mental patient in The Caretakers (1963) was quite an eye-opener for those familiar with Bergen only through her appearances on TV's To Tell the Truth. Less aesthetically successful was Kisses for My President (1964), in which Bergen starred as the first female Chief Executive. Though busy with her show-business activities into the 1990s (she co-starred in the network sitcom Baby Talk), it is interesting to note that, in her Who's Who entry, Bergen listed herself as a business executive first, an actress second. There is certainly plenty of justification for this; for over 40 years, she maintained successful business ventures as Polly Bergen Cosmetics, Polly Bergen Jewelry, and Polly Bergen Shoes; she was also active as part-owner of and pitch person for Oil-of-the-Turtle cosmetics. Equally busy in nonprofit organizations, she served with such concerns as the National Business Council and Freedom of Choice. She also authored three books: Fashion and Charm (1960), Polly's Principles (1974), and I'd Love to, but What'll I Wear? (1977).In later years, Bergen had recurring roles on Commander in Chief and Desperate Housewives, and was nominated for an Emmy for Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2008. Bergen died in 2014 at age 84.

Trivia: Blonde actress/model Tippi Hedren lists the year of her birth as 1935, which means that she would have been 14 or 15 when she appeared fleetingly in her first film, The Petty Girl (1950). Hedren did not resurface on the movie scene again until 1963, when she was "discovered" by Alfred Hitchcock. The official story is that Hitchcock wanted to mold Hedren into a new Grace Kelly; rumors persist that his interest in the actress went way beyond professional, and that he made a few clumsy advances towards her on the set. Whatever the case, Hedren starred in Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964). She was criticized for being too impassive in the former film and too expressive in the latter, though it isn't fair to pick on her for the shortcomings of the script and direction. Hedren was under contract not to Hitchcock but to his home studio of Universal; thus, she was obliged to appear in a 1963 Kraft Suspense Theatre episode and in director Charlie Chaplin's A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), acquitting herself nicely in both instances. She curtailed her film appearances in the late 1960s when she married her second husband, Noel Marshall. The Marshalls then proceeded to pour 11 years' work (and $17 million!) into Roar (1981), a film based on their own real-life efforts on behalf of the African wildlife preservation movement. Even three decades after the fact, Hedren can't quite shake her earlier relationship with Alfred Hitchcock: she played a murder victim in the 1990 TV remake of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, and starred in the made-for-cable The Birds II: Land's End (1994). Hedren remained active in small film and television roles throughout the 2000s, and appeared in the well-received documentaries The Elephant in the Living Room and Carol Channing: Larger Than Life in 2011. Hedren co-starred with Jess Weixler and Jesse Eisenberg in Free Samples (2012), an independent comedy following a cynical law-student whose brief stint driving an ice cream truck marks a very important transition in her life. Tippi Hedren is the mother of actress Melanie Griffith.

Trivia: Jonathan Banks began his film career in the sort of roles described by character actor Frank Faylen as "sneezers." For example: if you sneezed, you'd miss Banks' microscopic part in 1980's Stir Crazy. He was more visible in such roles as the hitchhiker in the 1982 biopic Frances and Algren in the 1983 seriocomedy 48 Hours. On television, Jonathan Banks was cast as the scurrilous extraterrestrial Commander Kroll in Otherworld (1985) and as Frank McPike, Ken Wahl's choleric boss, in Wiseguy (1987). Banks would continue to appear in several more films over the coming years, like Dark Blue and Reign Over Me, as well as TV shows like Breaking Bad.

Trivia: Patrick O'Neal made his first stage appearance in 1944 in his home state of Florida. While still a teenager, O'Neal was assigned to direct Signal Corps training shorts. Following his training at the Actors Studio and Neighborhood Playhouse, O'Neal entered the virgin territory of live TV, making appearances on such early anthologies as Gruen Playhouse. He played the romantic lead in his first film, 1954's The Mad Magician, thereafter settling into stuffed-shirt or villainous roles. It was fun to watch the usually reserved O'Neal make a meal of a mad-killer part obviously intended for Vincent Price in Chamber of Horrors (1966). It was also amusing to watch him bring a reluctant, droopy-eyed approach to the silly secret agentry of the 1967 spy spoof Matchless (1967). After appearing with Doris Day in Where Were You When the Lights Went Out (1966), O'Neal essayed the occasional role of dashing foreign correspondent on TV's The Doris Day Show (1968-73). Additional television assignments for O'Neal included his co-starring stint with Hazel Court in the 1957 comedy-melodrama series Dick and the Duchess (1957), the top-billed role of pathologist Daniel Coffee in the impressively produced videotaped medical series Diagnosis Unknown (1960), the straight-laced supporting role of lawyer Samuel Bennett in Kaz (1978) and the JR-type part of evil businessman Harlan Adams during the first (1983-84) season of Emerald Point NAS (Robert Vaughn took over the role in 1980). Making his Broadway debut in 1961, O'Neal appeared opposite Bette Davis the following year in his favorite part, the discredited, debauched Reverend Shannon in Tennessee Williams' Night of the Iguana. Going public by admitting his alcoholism in the 1970s, O'Neal appeared in a number of public-service announcements on behalf of AA; he also provided voiceovers for innumerable commercial products. When not performing, Patrick O'Neal pursued a successful second career as a restaurateur.

Trivia: African American actor James McEachin was a stage actor until signed to a Universal contract in the mid-1960s. Though relatively young, McEachin projected a middle-aged, "solid citizen" image that perfectly suited his title character in the Universal television series Tenafly (1973). McEachin was cast as private eye and loyal family man Harry Tenafly, one of the few TV detectives who relied more on brains than movie-star charisma. Since that time, James McEachin has usually been cast as a cop; he played Sergeant (and later Lieutenant) Brock on virtually every Perry Mason TV movie of the 1980s and 1990s-a notable exception being the 1987 entry The Case of the Scandalous Scoundrel, in which he was cast as "Harry Forbes."

Trivia: Argenziano, a supporting actor, appeared onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Betsy Jones-Moreland is best remembered today as a statuesque actress and leading lady of the late 1950s and early 1960s, especially in the films of Roger Corman. Yet she was always a somewhat reluctant actress, even as she pursued a career in the field. Born Mary Elizabeth Jones in Brooklyn, New York, in 1930, she seems never to have considered a career in entertainment, or any particularly "public" profession, while growing up. She was an office worker and secretary, her sole contact with the entertainment business being the fact that the company she worked for owned the rights to several children's shows of the 1950s. She began taking acting lessons as a way of overcoming her basic shyness, and that led her to getting work as a showgirl, which resulted in her earning a role in a touring company production of The Solid Gold Cadillac. She ended up in Hollywood, starting with bit roles in major releases, such as The Brothers Rico and The Garment Jungle. She soon became part of Roger Corman's stock company, starting with The Saga of the Viking Women And Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957) and culminating with the title role in The Last Woman on Earth (1960) and the female lead in Creature From the Haunted Sea (1961). In between these quickie productions and some small-screen work, Jones-Moreland also appeared in one notable Western: André de Toth's Day of the Outlaw (1959). Her television appearances included episodes of Perry Mason, McHale's Navy, Have Gun, Will Travel, My Favorite Martian, and Ironside. Her most memorable television appearance was in the Outer Limits episode "The Mutant", in which she appeared as part of a space expedition that's endangered when one of their number encounters deadly radiation. Corman later used her in his first big-budget movie, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), and she followed this up with small roles in theatrical films such as The Hindenburg and Gable and Lombard. She closed out her career as a trial judge in a handful of episodes of the 1990s revival of Perry Mason.

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.