Trivia: James Stewart was the movies' quintessential Everyman, a uniquely all-American performer who parlayed his easygoing persona into one of the most successful and enduring careers in film history. On paper, he was anything but the typical Hollywood star: Gawky and tentative, with a pronounced stammer and a folksy "aw-shucks" charm, he lacked the dashing sophistication and swashbuckling heroism endemic among the other major actors of the era. Yet it's precisely the absence of affectation which made Stewart so popular; while so many other great stars seemed remote and larger than life, he never lost touch with his humanity, projecting an uncommon sense of goodness and decency which made him immensely likable and endearing to successive generations of moviegoers.Born May 20, 1908, in Indiana, PA, Stewart began performing magic as a child. While studying civil engineering at Princeton University, he befriended Joshua Logan, who then headed a summer stock company, and appeared in several of his productions. After graduation, Stewart joined Logan's University Players, a troupe whose membership also included Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. He and Fonda traveled to New York City in 1932, where they began winning small roles in Broadway productions including Carrie Nation, Yellow Jack, and Page Miss Glory. On the recommendation of Hedda Hopper, MGM scheduled a screen test, and soon Stewart was signed to a long-term contract. He first appeared onscreen in a bit role in the 1935 Spencer Tracy vehicle The Murder Man, followed by another small performance the next year in Rose Marie.Stewart's first prominent role came courtesy of Sullavan, who requested he play her husband in the 1936 melodrama Next Time We Love. Speed, one of six other films he made that same year, was his first lead role. His next major performance cast him as Eleanor Powell's paramour in the musical Born to Dance, after which he accepted a supporting turn in After the Thin Man. For 1938's classic You Can't Take It With You, Stewart teamed for the first time with Frank Capra, the director who guided him during many of his most memorable performances. They reunited a year later for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart's breakthrough picture; a hugely popular modern morality play set against the backdrop of the Washington political system, it cemented the all-American persona which made him so adored by fans, earning a New York Film Critics' Best Actor award as well as his first Oscar nomination.Stewart then embarked on a string of commercial and critical successes which elevated him to the status of superstar; the first was the idiosyncratic 1939 Western Destry Rides Again, followed by the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner. After The Mortal Storm, he starred opposite Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in George Cukor's sublime The Philadelphia Story, a performance which earned him the Best Actor Oscar. However, Stewart soon entered duty in World War II, serving as a bomber pilot and flying 20 missions over Germany. He was highly decorated for his courage, and did not fully retire from the service until 1968, by which time he was an Air Force Brigadier General, the highest-ranking entertainer in the U.S. military. Stewart's combat experiences left him a changed man; where during the prewar era he often played shy, tentative characters, he returned to films with a new intensity. While remaining as genial and likable as ever, he began to explore new, more complex facets of his acting abilities, accepting roles in darker and more thought-provoking films. The first was Capra's 1946 perennial It's a Wonderful Life, which cast Stewart as a suicidal banker who learns the true value of life. Through years of TV reruns, the film became a staple of Christmastime viewing, and remains arguably Stewart's best-known and most-beloved performance. However, it was not a hit upon its original theatrical release, nor was the follow-up Magic Town -- audiences clearly wanted the escapist fare of Hollywood's prewar era, not the more pensive material so many other actors and filmmakers as well as Stewart wanted to explore in the wake of battle. The 1948 thriller Call Northside 777 was a concession to audience demands, and fans responded by making the film a considerable hit. Regardless, Stewart next teamed for the first time with Alfred Hitchcock in Rope, accepting a supporting role in a tale based on the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case. His next few pictures failed to generate much notice, but in 1950, Stewart starred in a pair of Westerns, Anthony Mann's Winchester 73 and Delmer Daves' Broken Arrow. Both were hugely successful, and after completing an Oscar-nominated turn as a drunk in the comedy Harvey and appearing in Cecil B. De Mille's Academy Award-winning The Greatest Show on Earth, he made another Western, 1952's Bend of the River, the first in a decade of many similar genre pieces.Stewart spent the 1950s primarily in the employ of Universal, cutting one of the first percentage-basis contracts in Hollywood -- a major breakthrough soon to be followed by virtually every other motion-picture star. He often worked with director Mann, who guided him to hits including The Naked Spur, Thunder Bay, The Man From Laramie, and The Far Country. For Hitchcock, Stewart starred in 1954's masterful Rear Window, appearing against type as a crippled photographer obsessively peeking in on the lives of his neighbors. More than perhaps any other director, Hitchcock challenged the very assumptions of the Stewart persona by casting him in roles which questioned his character's morality, even his sanity. They reunited twice more, in 1956's The Man Who Knew Too Much and 1958's brilliant Vertigo, and together both director and star rose to the occasion by delivering some of the best work of their respective careers. Apart from Mann and Hitchcock, Stewart also worked with the likes of Billy Wilder (1957's Charles Lindbergh biopic The Spirit of St. Louis) and Otto Preminger (1959's provocative courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder, which earned him yet another Best Actor bid). Under John Ford, Stewart starred in 1961's Two Rode Together and the following year's excellent The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The 1962 comedy Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation was also a hit, and Stewart spent the remainder of the decade alternating between Westerns and family comedies. By the early '70s, he announced his semi-retirement from movies, but still occasionally resurfaced in pictures like the 1976 John Wayne vehicle The Shootist and 1978's The Big Sleep. By the 1980s, Stewart's acting had become even more limited, and he spent much of his final years writing poetry; he died July 2, 1997.

Trivia: Born into a show business family, George Kennedy made his stage debut at the age of two in a touring company of Bringing up Father. By the time he was seven, he was spinning records on a New York radio station. Kennedy' showbusiness inclinations were put aside when he developed a taste for the rigors of military life during World War II, and he wound up spending 16 years in the army. His military career ended and his acting career began when a back injury in the late 1950s inspired him to seek out another line of work.Appropriately enough, given his background, Kennedy first made his name with a role as a military advisor on the Sergeant Bilko TV series. In films from 1961, the burly, 6'4" actor usually played heavies, both figuratively and literally; quite often, as in Charade (1963) and Straitjacket (1964), his unsavory screen characters were bumped off sometime during the fourth reel. One of his friendlier roles was as a compassionate Union officer in Shenandoah (1965), an assignment he was to treasure because it gave him a chance to work with the one of his idols, Jimmy Stewart.Kennedy moved up to the big leagues with his Academy Award win for his portrayal of Dragline in Cool Hand Luke (1967). An above-the-title star from then on, Kennedy has been associated with many a box-office hit, notably all four Airport films. Unlike many major actors, he has displayed a willingness to spoof his established screen image, as demonstrated by his portrayal of Ed Hocken in the popular Naked Gun series. On TV, Kennedy has starred in the weekly series Sarge (1971) and The Blue Knight (1978), and was seen as President Warren G. Harding in the 1979 miniseries Backstairs at the White House. During the mid '90s, he became known as a persuasive commercial spokesman in a series of breath-freshener advertisements. In 1997, he provided the voice for L.B. Mammoth in the animated musical Cats Don't Dance, and the following year again displayed his vocal talents as one of the titular toys-gone-bad in Small Soldiers. Kennedy continued to steadily work through the next two decades; his final role was in The Gambler in 2014. He died in 2016, at age 91.

Trivia: A graduate of the University of Michigan, Strother Martin was the National Junior Springboard Diving Champion when he came to Hollywood as a swimming coach in the late 1940s. He stuck around Lala-land to play a few movie bits and extra roles before finally receiving a role of substance in The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Lean and limber in his early day, Martin was frequently cast in parts which called upon his athletic prowess (e.g. a drawling big-league ball player in 1951's Rhubarb). As his face grew more pocked and his body more paunched with each advancing year, Martin put his reedy, whiny voice and sinister squint to excellent use as a villain, most often in westerns. It took him nearly 20 years to matriculate from character actor to character star. In 1967, Martin skyrocketed to fame as the sadistic prison-farm captain in Cool Hand Luke: his character's signature line, "What we have here is a failure t' communicate," became a national catchphrase. While he continued accepting secondary roles for the rest of his career, Martin was awarded top billing in two sleazy but likeable programmers, Brotherhood of Satan (1971) and Ssssssss (1973). A veteran of scores of television shows, Strother Martin was seen on a weekly basis as Aaron Donager in Hotel De Paree (1959) and as star Jimmy Stewart's country cousin in Hawkins (1973).

Trivia: One of the most iconic action stars of all time, Kurt Russell (born March 17th, 1951) is among the few to make the successful transition from child star to successful adult actor. As a youth, Russell aspired to follow the footsteps of his father, Bing Russell, who, in addition to being a big league baseball player, was also an actor (he was perhaps best known for his role as the sheriff on the TV Western Bonanza). That his heroes Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris did the same thing only strengthened Russell's resolve to have both a baseball and acting career.He first broke into acting on television, starring in the series The Travels of Jamie McPheeters, and he made his film debut playing the boy who kicks Elvis in the 1963 Elvis Presley vehicle It Happened at the World's Fair. After signing a ten-year contract with Disney, Russell got his big break as a juvenile actor in 1966, starring opposite Fred MacMurray in Disney's live-action feature Follow Me Boys! His association with the studio lasted through 1975, and produced such comedic family movies as The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit (1968), The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), The Barefoot Executive (1971), and The Strongest Man in the World (1975). The last film marked Russell's final collaboration with Disney, aside from his voicing the character of Copper in the studio's The Fox and the Hound (1981). Still an avid baseball enthusiast during those years, Russell nurtured his dreams of becoming a professional ball player until a shoulder injury permanently changed his plans.After ending his association with Disney, Russell disappeared from features for a few years. He appeared in a few television movies, most notably playing the title role in Elvis, John Carpenter's made-for-television biopic. His next role as a sleazy used car salesman in Robert Zemeckis' hilariously caustic Used Cars (1980) allowed him to counter his wholesome, all-American nice guy image, and prove that he was an actor of untapped range. Director Carpenter recognized this and cast Russell as ruthless mercenary Snake Plissken in his brooding sci-fi/action film Escape From New York (1981). The role would prove to be one of legendary status, and one that would cement Russell as a cult hero for generations to come. Carpenter also cast Russell as a scientist stranded in the Antarctic in his chilling 1982 remake of The Thing. Realizing that his characters were larger than life, Russell typically played them with a subtle tongue- in-cheek quality. He also used this comic intuition in comedies like 1987's Overboard, in which he starred alongside his long-time life-partner and mother of his child Golide Hawn.In 1983, Russell moved to serious drama, playing opposite Cher and Meryl Streep in Silkwood. The success of that film helped him break into a more mainstream arena, and he was later able to win praise for his dramatic work in such films as Swing Shift (1984), Tequila Sunrise (1988), and Winter People (1989). However, it is with his performances in action films that Russell remains most widely associated. He has appeared in a number of such films, all of disparate quality. Some of Russell's more memorable projects include Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Tango and Cash (1989), Backdraft (1991), Tombstone (1993), and Executive Decision (1996). In 1996, he reprised his Snake Plissken character for Carpenter's Escape From L.A. The following year, he starred opposite Kathleen Quinlan in the revenge thriller Breakdown before returning to the sci-fi/action realm with Soldier in 1998. It would be two years before movie-going audiences would again catch a glimpse of Russell, though with his roles in 2000 Miles to Graceland (again carrying on the Elvis associations that have haunted his career) and Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky, the versatile actor proved that he was still very much on the scene. Is some of Russell's later day roles had stressed the action angle a bit more than the more dramatic aspects of the stories, the release of Dark Blue in 2003 combined both with Russell cast as a volitile police officer tracking a killer against the backdrop of the 1992 L.A. riots. In 2005, Russell played a frustrated father and horse-man in Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, showing audiences that for all his on-screen bombast, he still had a sensitive side. He quickly leapt back into the action-packed saddle, however, with a leading role in 2006's remake of The Poseidon Adventure, Poseidon. Soon afterward, he accepted a role that took a decidedly self-aware perspective on his own fame as an over-the-top action star as he signed on for the leading role in Death Proof, Quinten Tarantino's half of the double-feature Grindhouse. A tribute to the fantastically violent B-exploitation films of its title, Grindhouse would cast Russell as Stuntman Mike, a literal lady-killer with a car that can be crashed and smashed without ever allowing the driver to be hurt.

Trivia: Raised in Bronxville, N.Y., the granddaughter of renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Anne Baxter took up acting at the age of 11 with Maria Ouspenskaya, debuting on Broadway two years later (in Seen but Not Heard); she continued working on Broadway until her screen debut at age 17 in Twenty-Mule Team (1940), a minor Western featuring Wallace Beery and Marjorie Rambeau. Charming if not beautiful, she tended to play shy and innocent types and gave a few outstanding performances, such as that with Bette Davis in All About Eve (1950); she and Davis were both nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, but it went to Judy Holliday. Her "breakthrough" film was Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), leading to many more roles in the next few years. At home in a variety of parts, she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1946 for her work in The Razor's Edge. Although she has worked with many of Hollywood's most celebrated and accomplished directors (Welles, Hitchcock, Lang, Mankiewicz, Wilder Wellman), after the mid-'50s she tended to get poor roles in mediocre movies. Baxter left Hollywood in 1961 for an isolated cattle station in Australia, an experience she described in her critically-acclaimed book Intermission: A True Story. She made a few more films, but her major work was as Lauren Bacall's replacement as Margo Channing in Applause, the musical version of All About Eve; having played Eve in the film, she now assumed the role earlier held by Davis. Baxter also did some TV work, including a part in the early '80s series Hotel. She was married from 1946-53 to actor John Hodiak, whom she met while filming Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944).

Trivia: The great-grandson of a famous and influential 19th century Minnesota senator, actor William Windom was born in New York, briefly raised in Virginia, and attended prep school in Connecticut. During World War II, Windom was drafted into the army, which acknowledged his above-the-norm intelligence by bankrolling his adult education at several colleges. It was during his military career that Windom developed a taste for the theater, acting in an all-serviceman production of Richard III directed by Richard Whorf. Windom went on to appear in 18 Broadway plays before making his film debut as the prosecuting attorney in To Kill a Mockingbird. He gained TV fame as the co-star of the popular 1960s sitcom The Farmer's Daughter and as the James Thurber-ish lead of the weekly 1969 series My World and Welcome to It. Though often cast in conservative, mild-mannered roles, Windom's offscreen persona was that of a much-married, Hemingway-esque adventurer. William Windom was seen in the recurring role of crusty Dr. Seth Haslett on the Angela Lansbury TV series Murder She Wrote.

Trivia: The son of an English-immigrant clothier, Mike Kellin decided to become an actor in the second grade, after watching a school production of A Christmas Carol. The restless Kellin briefly attended three colleges before serving in the Navy in World War II. After flunking out of Yale Drama School, Kellin headed to New York, where he studied acting under Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner and Stella Adler. Denied leading-man assignments because of what he described as his "lived-in face," Kellin's big Broadway break came in the role of the abrasive sergeant in the 1949 Broadway comedy At War with the Army; he would reprise his role in the 1950 film version, which starred Martin and Lewis. Kellin went on to win the Tony award for his performance in the 1956 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Pipe Dream. In 1960, Kellin was cast as slovenly Chief Mate McCarthy in The Wackiest Ship in the Army; when this film was adapted into a TV series in 1965, Kellin came along for the ride in substantially the same role, though the character was rechristened as Chief Petty Officer Willie Miller. Mike Kellin's most celebrated movie appearance was his Oscar-nominated role as the father of the imprisoned protagonist in Midnight Express (1978).

Trivia: Lead and supporting actor, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: From his screen debut in 1965 onward, Robert Donner has revelled in spooky, oddball roles of the street evangelist/undertaker/obsessive lawman variety. Most often spotted in Westerns, he has appeared in El Dorado (1967), The Undefeated (1969), Chisum (1970), High Plains Drifter (1973), The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973), and The Last Hard Men (1975). On TV, he was regularly featured as Yancy Tucker on The Waltons (1972-1979) and Mayor Chamberlain Brown in Legend (1995). Donner's crowning series-TV achievement was as the zoned-out Exidor, leader of an invisible cult called the Friends of Venus, on the popular sitcom Mork & Mindy (1978-1982). Robert Donner is married to producer/writer Jill Sherman.

Trivia: Big-framed character actor (and sometime leading man) David Huddleston worked in virtually every film and television genre there is, from Westerns to crime dramas to science fiction. Born in Vinton, Virginia, he attended the Fork Union Military Academy before entering the United States Air Force, where he received a commission as an officer. After returning to civilian life, Huddleston enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his television debut in 1961, at age 31, in an episode of the Western series Shotgun Slade. Two years later, the actor made his first big-screen appearance with a small role in All the Way Home (1963). A year later, he showed up in Black Like Me; and in 1968, Huddleston was back on the big screen in the thriller A Lovely Way to Die. He got considerably busier in the years that followed, mostly on television series such as Adam 12, Then Came Bronson, and Room 222, in roles of ever-increasing size. These were broken up by the occasional film job, of which the most notable at the time was the part of the comically helpful town dentist in Howard Hawks' Western Rio Lobo (1970), which gave Huddleston some extended (and humorous) screen-time alongside John Wayne. At the time, his feature-film work was weighted very heavily toward Westerns, while on television Huddleston played everything from service-station attendants to teachers to devious executives, primarily in crime shows. With his deep voice and prominent screen presence, plus a sense of humor that never seemed too far from his portrayals -- even of villains -- Huddleston was one of the busier character actors of the 1970s. Indeed, 1974 comprised a year of credits that any actor in the business could envy: John Wayne used Huddleston in McQ, one of the aging star's efforts to get away from Westerns, but Huddleston was back doing oaters in Billy Two Hats and aided Mel Brooks in parodying the genre in Blazing Saddles (all 1974). As comical as Huddleston could be, he could play sinister equally well, as he proved in Terence Young's The Klansman (1974) -- and that doesn't even count his television roles. By the end of the 1970s, he had graduated to a starring role in the series Hizzoner (1979), about a small-town mayor; and in the 1980s he had recurring roles in series such as The Wonder Years. Huddleston's big-screen breakthrough came with the title role in Santa Claus: The Movie (1985), and he became a ubiquitous figure on the small screen with a series of orange-juice commercials. His subsequent big-screen appearances included Frantic (1988) and The Big Lebowski (1998), playing the title character, and he continued working into the first decade of the 21st century. In 2004, Huddleston essayed one of the most interesting and challenging roles of his screen career, in the short film Reveille. Working without dialogue alongside James McEachin (with whom he'd previously worked in the series Tenafly), he helped tell the story of a sometimes comical, ultimately bittersweet rivalry between two veterans of different armed services. Huddleston died in 2016, at age 85.

Trivia: American character actor Dort Clark is best known for his television work, but he has also appeared in feature films. In addition, he has also appeared in many Broadway musicals and touring troupes. On television, he had a role on the ABC soap opera General Hospital for many years and also made guest appearances on shows ranging from Daniel Boone to The Monkees and Bewitched.

Trivia: Before becoming a screenwriter, James Lee Barrett served in the Marines. His first screenplay for The D.I. (1957) was about a Marine drill instructor. Barret went on to write many assorted action films in genres ranging from westerns to war films to police dramas to chase movies. He also penned the 1965 biblical epic, The Greatest Story Ever Told. In addition to screenplays, Barret also wrote pilot episodes for TV series and screenplays for TV movies. Later he won a Tony Award for his libretto for Shenandoah, a musical adaptation of one of his westerns.

Trivia: His three-decade career in front of the camera yielding roles in such classic films as The Blackboard Jungle (1955), Rebel Without a Cause (also 1955), and Forbidden Planet (1956), actor Peter Miller's most prolific years onscreen may have been during the 1950s, though he remained active onscreen until the early '70s. Following his debut in Blackboard Jungle, Miller moved on to credited roles in such features as A Strange Adventure (1956) and as the second-billed hoodlum of director Robert Altman's The Delinquents (1957). Trading his pomade for a military-style buzz cut in the later years of the decade, Miller took on roles in 1958's Imitation General and the 1961 G.I. comedy Marines, Let's Go. Onscreen appearances became ever more rare into the following decade, and following Fools' Parade in 1971, Miller bid the silver screen farewell. On October 7, 2003, Peter Miller died of cancer in Santa Monica, CA. He was 73.