Trivia: A witty and stylish lead actress of stage and screen, Russell tended to play successful career women who were skilled in repartee. She trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, then began her stage career in her early '20s. She debuted onscreen in 1934 and immediately had a very busy film career. At first appearing in routine films, in the '40s she began to specialize in light, sophisticated comedies, for which she had a unique talent. In the '50s her career briefly declined and she went to Broadway, where she starred in three successful productions. One of these was Auntie Mame, later made into a film in which she reprised her stage role (1958). She went on to appear in a handful of films before she was struck by crippling arthritis. Known for her charity work, in 1972 she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, a special Oscar. Russell received four Academy Award nominations during her career. She was married to producer Frederick Brisson. She authored an autobiography, Life is a Banquet.

Trivia: Mississippi-born Stella Stevens was a wife, mother, and divorcée before she was 17. While studying medicine at Memphis State College, Stevens became interested in acting and modeling. The notoriety of her nude spread in Playboy magazine was quickly offset by the public's realization that she had genuine talent, particularly in the comedy field. Stevens' many delightful comic characterizations include Apassionata von Climax in the movie version of Li'l Abner (1959), Glenn Ford's drum-playing girlfriend in Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963), and the klutzy heroine in the Matt Helm opus The Silencers (1966). She also showed up in a brace of 1960s cult favorites: Elvis Presley's Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962) and Jerry Lewis' Nutty Professor (1963), her presence in the latter film was celebrated by Lewis' utilization of the Victor Young musical piece "Stella by Starlight." Despite consistently good work, Stevens never achieved the full stardom that she deserved: When she posed again for Playboy in 1968, she admitted that it was purely to get people to attend her films. Stevens worked steadily on television since the late '50s, appearing regularly on the Flamingo Road series from 1981 to 1982. She switched to the other side of cameras in the 1980s, producing the documentary The American Heroine and directing the inexpensive Canadian feature The Ranch (1989). Stella Stevens is the mother of actor Andrew Stevens, and was very briefly the mother-in-law of actress Kate Jackson.

Trivia: Fresh out of the Connecticut College for Women, Susan Saint James secured work as a model, then talked her way into a contract with Universal Pictures. With no previous acting experience, Susan was given a co-starring assignment as magazine researcher Peggy Maxwell in Universal's made-for-TV Fame is the Name of the Game (1966). Susan would continue as Peggy in the subsequent TV series Name of the Game, which ran from 1968 to 1971 and which earned her an Emmy. During this time she also had a recurring role as kooky lady jewel robber Chuck Brown on the Robert Wagner TV weekly It Takes a Thief. Possessed of a breezy, garrulous, inquisitive quality, Susan was very much an acquired taste so far as many TV critics were concerned. Nonetheless, she achieved worldwide popularity as Sally McMillan on the TV detective series McMillan and Wife (1971-77) in which she costarred with Rock Hudson. The actress' comic skills grew sharper the longer she remained in the business; her best film appearance was as the constitutionally sloppy lady love of vampire George Hamilton in Love at First Bite (1979). In 1984, she co-starred with Jane Curtin in the single-mom sitcom Kate and Allie, which lasted until 1989. She effectively went into retirement after the end of Kate and Allie, but she did show up on an episode of The Drew Carey Show. Her off-screen pursuits have leaned towards politics, ecology and social consciousness; she has been very active in the Democratic Party, and in 1974 hosted a fund-raising telethon for the party in the company of Hubert Humphrey.

Trivia: "I'm not a comic," insisted Mary Wickes. "I'm an actress who plays comedy." True enough; still Wickes was often heaps funnier than the so-called comics she supported. The daughter of a well-to-do St. Louis banker, Wickes was an excellent student, completing a political science degree at the University of Washington at the age of 18. She intended to become a lawyer, but she was deflected into theatre. During her stock company apprenticeship, Wickes befriended Broadway star Ina Claire, who wrote the young actress a letter of introduction to powerful New York producer Sam Harris. She made her Broadway debut in 1934, spending the next five seasons in a variety of characterizations (never the ingenue). In 1939, she found time to make her film bow in the Red Skelton 2-reeler Seein' Red. After a string of Broadway flops, Wickes scored a hit as long-suffering Nurse Preen (aka "Nurse Bedpan") in the Kaufman-Hart comedy classic The Man Who Came to Dinner. She was brought to Hollywood to repeat her role in the 1941 film version of Dinner. After a brief flurry of movie activity, Wickes went back to the stage, returning to Hollywood in 1948 in a role specifically written for her in The Decision of Christopher Blake. Thereafter, she remained in great demand in films, playing an exhausting variety of nosy neighbors, acerbic housekeepers and imperious maiden aunts. Though her characters were often snide and sarcastic, Wickes was careful to inject what she called "heart" into her portrayals; indeed, it is very hard to find an out-and-out villainess in her manifest. Even when she served as the model for Cruella DeVil in the 1961 animated feature 101 Dalmations, Cruella's voice was dubbed by the far more malevolent-sounding Betty Lou Gerson. Far busier on TV than in films, Wickes was a regular on ten weekly series between 1953 and 1985, earning an Emmy nomination for her work on 1961's The Gertrude Berg Show. She also has the distinction of being the first actress to essay the role of Mary Poppins in a 1949 Studio One presentation. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Wickes did a great deal of guest-artist work in colleges and universities; during this period she herself went back to school, earning a master's degree from UCLA. Maintaining her professional pace into the 1990s, Wickes scored a hit with modern moviegoers as Sister Mary Lazarus in the two Sister Act comedies. Mary Wickes' final performance was a voiceover stint as one of the gargoyles in Disney's animated Hunchback of Notre Dame; she died a few days before finishing this assignment, whereupon Jane Withers dubbed in the leftover dialogue.

Trivia: Actress Binnie Barnes enjoyed a 30-year career on both sides of the Atlantic, and despite appearances in several notable films in her native England, she found her most lasting success in Hollywood, where she was best remembered for her tart-tongued portrayals. She was born Gittel Enoyce Barnes in London to a British father who was Jewish and an Italian mother. She was raised Jewish, although she converted to Catholicism upon her second marriage; later in life, she also took the formal name Gertrude Maude Barnes. It took until her teens before she actually entered performing, as a trick-rope artist in vaudeville (billed as "Texas Binnie Barnes"). Around that career start at 15, she also worked as a nurse, chorus girl, dance hostess, and milkmaid over the next few years. Barnes didn't start formal acting until age 26, working with Charles Laughton on stage. And apart from one appearance in a 1923 silent, she made her proper screen debut in 1931 in a series of short films, cast opposite comedian Stanley Lupino. Barnes was later signed to Alexander Korda's fledgling London Films, through which she was cast in movies such as Counsel's Opinion (1932) and other minor productions, earning the princely sum of 35 pounds (roughly $180) a week, which was actually very good money by ordinary standards, but hardly as star's compensation. She had something of a breakthrough in Korda's 1933 film The Private Life of Henry VIII portraying Catherine Howard, which gave her valuable exposure in England and America (where the movie was extraordinarily popular). Barnes was in the stage version of Cavalcade which, in turn, led to Hollywood to do the movie version and marked the beginning of her American career. Although she was initially uncomfortable in Hollywood, it was there that she spent most of the rest of her screen career. It helped that during the next few years she suppressed her English accent and developed a new, sassier persona as a wise-cracking female character lead, with her tall, imposing beauty and good looks, she was still attractive, but was usually cast as the heroine's best friend or older sister, and frequently with the best lines in those roles. At her best in those years, Barnes was a sort of trans-Atlantic rival to Eve Arden, cast in the same kind of sarcastic, knowing, yet attractive female roles. She still occasionally worked in films in England, including Korda's The Private Life of Don Juan and The Divorce of Lady X (a remake of Counsel's Opinion, in which Merle Oberon played her former role, while Barnes played the wife in the comedy of mistaken identity).Barnes had a sense of humor about herself that allowed her to work comfortably opposite performers such as the Ritz Brothers (The Three Musketeers), in which she was turned upside down and shaken by the comic trio; Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in The Time of Their Lives, in which she had one of the funniest "in" joke lines in the history of Hollywood (when meeting the intense, taciturn housekeeper played by Gale Sondergaard, Barnes' character remarks, "Didn't I see you in 'Rebecca'?"). She also got to portray a lusty side to her screen persona as the lady pirate Anne Bonney in The Spanish Main (a role originally slated for June Duprez), which afforded her a great death scene as well as some fierce and entertaining interactions with Maureen O'Hara, as the two contended for the affections of Paul Henried.In 1940, she married her second husband, actor/announcer-turned-film executive Mike Frankovich, and the two eventually moved to Italy following the end of the Second World War. There she produced movies, as well as acting in them, including Decameron Nights (1953) (in which -- shades of Alec Guinness -- she played eight different roles). Barnes retired in 1955 to devote herself to her home life, but in the mid-'60s, at her husband's insistence, she started to work again, on television and in feature films. She resumed acting on The Donna Reed Show, in two episodes three seasons apart, and played Sister Celestine in The Trouble With Angels (1967) and its sequel, Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (1968). Barnes' last screen appearance was in 40 Carats (1973), and during that same year she was a guest on The Tonight Show. She enjoyed a long and happy retirement, and passed away in 1998 at the age of 95, six years after her husband passed away.

Trivia: Few American comedians have had so aggressive a "stage mother" as did Milton Berle. Berle's mother Sarah dragged her son to New Jersey's Edison movie studios in 1914 to do extra work, then finessed the lad into supporting roles, including the part of a newsboy in the first-ever feature-length comedy, Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), which starred Charlie Chaplin. Under Sarah's powerhouse tutelage, Berle moved into vaudeville, making his debut at the prestigious Palace Theatre in 1921. Berle continued as a vaudeville headliner, with occasional stopovers on Broadway and in Hollywood, into the World War II years. His lengthy starring stint in the 1943 edition of Broadway's Ziegfeld Follies established Berle as a brash, broad, wisecracking comedian par excellence, whose carefully publicized propensity for "lifting" other comedians' material earned him the nickname "the Thief of Bad Gags." After only moderate success on radio and in films, Berle made a spectacular television debut as star of NBC's Texaco Star Theatre in 1948, which was the single most popular comedy/variety series of TV's earliest years and earned the comedian one of the industry's first Emmy Awards. So valuable was Berle to NBC that the network signed him to a 30-year "lifetime contract" in 1951, which paid him 100,000 dollars annually whether he performed or not (Berle managed to outlive the contract). Though his TV stardom waned in the late '50s, Berle was still very much in demand as an emcee, lecturer, author, TV guest star, motion picture character actor, and nightclub comedian -- still using essentially the same material and delivery which made him a star over 60 years ago. Berle died March 27, 2002 of colon cancer, he was 93.

Trivia: Running away from home at the age of 15, Arthur Godfrey held down scores of short-term jobs, sleeping on park benches whenever funds ran low. Despite his itinerant lifestyle, Godfrey was extremely ambitious, gleaning his formal education from the International Correspondence School and twice attempting to launch a naval career. Along the way, he discovered that he had an innate skill for self-promotion and salesmanship, a combination that enabled him to tour as a vaudeville musician despite a minimum of musical talent. In 1929, "Red Godfrey, the Warbling Banjoist" went to work for a Baltimore radio station WFBR. This led to a better job at NBC's Washington, D.C. affiliate, thence to a disc jockey at CBS' Washington outlet. Eschewing the declamatory style prevalent among radio pitchmen, Godfrey adopted what he called the "one guy" approach, delivering commercials, introducing songs, and casually dispensing small talk as if talking to one person rather than thousands. In the early '40s, he gained nationwide popularity as a staff announcer at CBS, briefly serving as announcer for Fred Allen's show. His career turning point came with his emotional coverage of President Roosevelt's funeral in 1945, which attracted the attention of network bigwigs and resulted in his own coast-to-coast morning program. Immediately winning a huge audience with his calm, straightforward style, Godfrey used his program to introduce a whole slew of talented newcomers, which he dubbed "the Little Godfreys." At one time or another, his staff of regulars included Julius LaRosa, Marion Marlowe, the McGuire Sisters, Pat Boone, Anita Bryant, announcer Tony Marvin (who stayed with him the longest), and orchestra leader Archie Bleyer. In addition to his morning show, he also hosted Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts; and in 1949, he moved into television, gaining ever greater success. At one point, it was estimated that Godfrey's programs generated 12 percent of CBS' TV revenues, making him one of the most powerful men in show business. As his influence grew, so did his ego; he held court over his "Little Godfreys" like a banana republic dictator, and made grandiose, arbitrary demands upon his home network. Publicly the soul of affability, the private Godfrey was a volatile, unpredictably temperamental man, forever reminding his minions, "I made you all and I can break you at any time." On October 19, 1953, Godfrey's huge radio and TV audience received its first real evidence of their idol's despotism when he fired singer Julius LaRosa on the air. As other members of the Godfrey entourage got the ax over the next few years, his disillusioned audience began to dwindle. Further nails in his coffin came with two à clef films inspired by the Godfrey phenomenon, The Great Man (1956) and A Face in the Crowd, both of which centered around powerful media icons with feet of clay. Godfrey's popularity enjoyed a short resurgence in 1959 when he survived a delicate operation for lung cancer, but public sympathy can sustain a career only so long. By 1960 he was completely off television save for a hosting job on Allen Funt's Candid Camera. Making his screen debut with a guest spot in 1963's Four for Texas, he played his first full-fledged screen role in The Glass-Bottom Boat (1966), playing Doris Day's father. On April 30, 1972, 27 years to the day after its debut, Godfrey's daily radio program was canceled by mutual agreement between the star and his network. He continued appearing on TV as a commercial spokesman, earning a short flurry of press coverage when he broke his contract with the Axion company because he felt that the product was a pollutant. He made several attempts in the 1970s at a TV comeback, but was never able to achieve that goal, partly because he was incapable of compromising his own values, and partly because he'd made too many enemies over the years. When Arthur Godfrey died in 1983, his obituary, which once upon a time might have been a headline story, was tucked away in the back pages -- an ignominious finale for a man who, for better or worse, was a true television giant.

Trivia: The quintessential blue-eyed, blonde-haired, freckle-faced Boy Next Door, Van Johnson was the son of a Rhode Island plumbing contractor. Making his Broadway bow in The New Faces of 1936, Johnson spent several busy years as a musical-comedy chorus boy. After understudying Gene Kelly in Pal Joey, he came to Hollywood to recreate his minor role in the film version of the Broadway musical hit Too Many Girls. Proving himself an able actor in the Warner Bros. "B" picture Murder in the Big House (1942), Johnson was signed by MGM, where he was given the traditional big buildup. He served his MGM apprenticeship as Lew Ayres' replacement in the "Dr. Kildare" series, latterly known as the "Dr. Gillespie" series, in deference to top-billed Lionel Barrymore. While en route to a preview showing of an MGM film, Johnson was seriously injured in an auto accident. This proved to be a blessing in disguise to his career: the accident prevented his being drafted into the army, thus he had the young leading-man field virtually to himself at MGM during the war years. Delivering solid dramatic performances in such major productions as The Human Comedy (1943) A Guy Named Joe (1943) and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Johnson rapidly became a favorite with the public--particularly the teenaged female public. He remained a favorite into the 1950s, alternating serious characterizations with lightweight romantic fare. One of his best roles was Lt. Maryk in The Caine Mutiny (1954), for which he was loaned to Columbia. When his MGM contract came to an end, Johnson free-lanced both in Hollywood and abroad. He also made his London stage debut as Harold Hill in The Music Man, a role he'd continue to play on the summer-theater circuit well into the 1970s. His TV work included the lead in the elaborate 1957 musical version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin (released theatrically in 1961) and his "special guest villain" turn as The Minstrel on Batman (1967). He staged a film comeback as a character actor in the late 1960s, earning excellent reviews for his work in Divorce American Style (1967). And in the mid-1980s, Van Johnson again proved that he still had the old star quality, first as one of the leads in the short-lived TVer Glitter, then in a gently self-mocking role in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and finally as Gene Barry's replacement in the hit Broadway musical La Cage Aux Folles (1985).

Trivia: Robert Taylor's cumbersome given name, Spangler Arlington Brugh, can be blamed on his father, a Nebraska doctor. As a high schooler, Taylor participated on the track team, won oratory awards, and played the cello (his first love) in the school band. Attending Pomona College to study music, Taylor became involved in student theatricals, where his uncommonly good looks assured him leading roles. Spotted by an MGM talent scout, the 23-year-old Taylor was signed to a contract with that studio -- though his first film, Handy Andy (1934), would be a loanout to Fox. Taylor was given an extended, publicly distributed "screen test" when he starred in the MGM "Crime Does Not Pay" short, playing a handsome gangster who tries to avoid arrest by purposely disfiguring his face with acid. It was another loanout, to Universal for Magnificent Obsession (1935), that truly put Taylor in the matinee-idol category. Too "pretty" to be taken seriously by the critics, Taylor had to endure some humiliating reviews during his first years in films; even when delivering a perfectly acceptable performance as Armand in Camille (1936), Taylor was damned with faint praise, reviewers commenting on how "surprised" they were that he could act. Nobody liked Taylor but his public and his coworkers, who were impressed by his cooperation and his willingness to give 110 percent of himself and his time on the set. Though never a great actor, Taylor was capable of being a very good one, as even a casual glance at Johnny Eager (1942) and Bataan (1942) will confirm. Taylor's contributions to the war effort included service as an Air Force flight instructor and his narration of the 1944 documentary The Fighting Lady. His film career in eclipse during the 1950s, Taylor starred for three years in the popular weekly police series Robert Taylor's Detectives (1959-1962); and when his friend, Ronald Reagan, opted for a full-time political career in 1965, Taylor succeeded Reagan as host/narrator of the Western anthology Death Valley Days. Robert Taylor was married twice, to actresses Barbara Stanwyck (they remained good friends long after the divorce) and Ursula Theiss.

Trivia: Born Michael Clouspy, this supporting actor appeared on screen from the late '60s.

Trivia: American supporting actor John Findlater worked in films and in television where he usually played young, inexperienced men.

Trivia: American actor William Lundigan launched his show business career working as an adolescent announcer for a Syracuse radio station, which was housed in a building owned by his father. Abandoning a planned law career, Lundigan spent thirteen years as an announcer before being discovered by a Universal film executive in 1937. Appearing as a lightweight leading man in such films as Armored Car (1937) and Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1938), and in featured roles in the bigger-budgeted Dodge City and The Old Maid (both 1939), Lundigan worked steadily in the major studios before being drafted into the Marines for World War II service in 1942. Like many other second-echelon Hollywood actors, Lundigan found the going rough after the war, though as a Fox contractee he managed to land occasional good parts in such pictures as Pinky (1949) and I'll Get By (1950). When prospects dried up for Lundigan in the mid-1950s, he returned to announcing as the host of the popular CBS dramatic anthology Climax. Science fiction fans will remember Lundigan for his role in Riders to the Stars (1954), and for his portrayal of TV's first true astronaut, Col. MacCauley, in the 1959 weekly adventure series Men Into Space.

Trivia: The sister of actors Rex and Victoria Thompson, Hilary Thompson played ingénues and free-spirited roles in films during the late '60s through the early '70s.