Trivia: Richard Basehart was too much of an actor (and almost too good an actor) to ever be a movie star -- his range was sufficient to allow him to play murderers, psychopaths, sociopaths, and would-be suicides in 20 years' worth of theatrical films in totally convincing fashion, but also to portray a hero in the longest-running science fiction/adventure series on network television. Without ever achieving stardom, he became one of the most respected performers of his generation in theater, film, and television. Born John Richard Basehart in Zanesville, OH, in 1914, he spent a part of his childhood in an orphanage after the death of his mother, when his father, Harry Basehart, found himself unable to look after the four children left in his care. The younger Basehart considered a career in journalism like his father, but when he was 13, he began acting in small roles in a local theater company and came to enjoy performing. In the mid-'30s, he joined Jasper Deeter's famed Hedgerow Theater company in Rose Valley, PA. By the end of the 1930s, he'd set his sights on a Broadway career and moved to New York. During the 1939 season, while working in stock, Basehart met an actress named Stephanie Klein, and the two were married in early 1940. He continued trying to establish a foothold in New York and in 1942, joined Margaret Webster's theater company. Basehart's breakthrough role came during 1945 in the play The Hasty Heart, in which director Bretaigne Windust cast him in the central role of the proud, dying young Scottish soldier. Basehart won the 1945 New York Drama Critics Award for his performance and was named the most promising newcomer of the season. Not only did Broadway producers take notice of Basehart but so did Hollywood, and he was soon signed to a movie contract. Thus began a screen career that lasted nearly 40 years, starting with Repeat Performance (1947), a thriller starring Joan Leslie. He followed this with Cry Wolf (1947), an adventure yarn also starring Barbara Stanwyck, Errol Flynn, and Geraldine Brooks. Basehart was unusually careful as a new Hollywood performer to vary his roles and avoid getting typecast. His first of what proved a string of memorable portrayals was in He Walked By Night (1948), a fact-based thriller in which the actor played a brilliant but sociopathic electronics expert, responsible for a string of burglaries and for killing a police officer. Viewers who grew up knowing Basehart as the heroic figure on the series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in the 1960s are often startled to see him 20 years earlier in He Walked By Night as an almost feral presence, quietly fierce, threatening and stealthy in his efforts to escape detection and capture. Over the next two years, Basehart essayed a multitude of roles, in contemporary dramatic subjects and period dramas, the most interesting of which was Anthony Mann's Reign of Terror (1949), in which he portrayed Maximilien Robespierre, one of the chief architects of the bloodbath that followed in the wake of the French Revolution. In 1950, Basehart played one of the most difficult film roles of his career when he was cast in the fact-based movie Fourteen Hours, playing a young man who spends 14 hours on the ledge of an office building, threatening to jump. It was during the shooting of this movie that Basehart's wife, Stephanie, was taken ill with what proved to be a brain tumor, and died very suddenly. He finished work on the film and then left the United States, going to Italy where he began putting his life back together. This began when he met the actress Valentina Cortese, whom he married in 1951. The two worked together in one movie, The House on Telegraph Hill, directed by Robert Wise at 20th Century Fox, in which Basehart played the villain trying to murder Cortese for her estate. Basehart returned to Hollywood only intermittently for the next nine years, and his next appearance in an American movie wasn't until 1953, when he worked in Titanic, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb. It was during the decade that Basehart made his home in Europe that the actor became multilingual, and developed a serious following over there as a leading man; while other, older American performers were entering the final legs of their careers making pictures in France, Italy, or England, he was making important pictures and playing great roles, as the doomed, gentle clown in Federico Fellini's La Strada; a basically honest man driven into crime in The Good Die Young; the movie director threatened by a blackmailer in Joseph Losey's Finger of Guilt, and even an action-adventure hero in an Italian-made version of Cartouche (1957). John Huston specifically chose Basehart for the central role of Ishmael in his superb 1956 film version of Moby Dick. In 1957, Basehart tried reestablishing his Hollywood acting credentials with his portrayal of a conscience-stricken American officer in the movie Time Limit, which got good notices but proved to be a one-off American screen credit. In 1960, the actor divorced his second wife and left Italy behind. He returned to live permanently in America and restart his career, and began a new life, marrying again in 1962. He found that film roles weren't easily forthcoming, however -- the only part that came his way was the title role in Stuart Heisler's 1962 drama Hitler, in which Basehart gave an unusually complex, cerebral portrayal of the Nazi leader. He made numerous appearances in dramatic series such as Combat and Naked City, and television anthology shows including Playhouse 90 and Hallmark Hall of Fame. In 1964, Basehart accepted the offer of a starring role on a television series, beginning a four-year run on the Irwin Allen-produced Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, portraying Admiral Harriman Nelson. Thus began the steadiest work of his career, more than 100 episodes made Basehart a television star. He appeared in one movie during this period, John Sturges' thriller The Satan Bug (1965), in which he played the villain. Following the cancellation of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Basehart returned to acting on-stage, interspersed with work in made-for-television movies and occasional feature films, such as Rage (1972), directed by George C. Scott. He won critical acclaim for his work in the drama The Andersonville Trial, directed by George C. Scott, portraying Lt. Col. Henry Wirz, the commandant of the notorious Confederate prisoner of war camp, and made the rounds of guest star roles in television shows, perhaps most memorably the "Dagger of the Mind" episode of Columbo. Basehart and his third wife, Diana, also became known for their dedication to the cause of animal rights, founding the organization Actors and Others for Animals. During the final years of his life, he did some acting on television series such as Knight Rider and appeared in movies such as the hit Being There, but he was also very much in demand as a narrator, working on Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War (1980), among other projects. It was as a narrator that he made his final public appearance, at the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics. Basehart suffered a series of strokes, and passed away soon after.

Trivia: Yale graduate Paul Douglas played professional football with the Philadelphia Yellow Jackets before turning to regional theatre. He parlayed his love of athletics into a prosperous career as a sports announcer in the 1930s; in the next decade he became a radio actor and master of ceremonies (he was the announcer for bandleader Glenn Miller's final program in 1944). A frequent visitor to the Broadway stages, Douglas became a star in the tailor-made role of vulgar junk tycoon Harry Brock in Garson Kanin's play Born Yesterday, in which he was co-starred with Judy Holliday. After 1,024 appearances as Harry Brock, Douglas made his first film, 1949's A Letter to Three Wives. An unlikely prospect for movie stardom with his burly build and longshoreman's voice, Douglas nonetheless remained popular throughout the 1950s. He is best remembered for his brace of baseball pictures, It Happens Every Spring (1949) and Angels in the Outfield (1951), and for his reteaming with Judy Holliday in 1956's The Solid Gold Cadillac. Among Douglas' five wives were actresses Virginia Field and Jan Sterling. Though the newspaper obituaries insisted that Paul Douglas had not been ill before his fatal heart attack in 1959, he looked so drawn and haggard in his last appearance on the TV series The Twilight Zone that the episode ("The Mighty Casey") had to be reshot with Jack Warden in Douglas' part.

Trivia: The daughter of Norman Bel Geddes, the noted architect and theatrical set designer, Barbara Bel Geddes was a professional stage actress from age 18. She gained prominence as the ingenue in the original Broadway production of that summer-stock perennial Out of the Frying Pan. Other accomplishments in Barbara's years on stage included the New York critics circle award in 1945, and her performance as Maggie "The Cat" in the original 1955 production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Ms. Bel Geddes enjoyed a promising beginning in films in 1947's The Long Night (remake of Marcel Carne's Le Jour se Leve); one year later, she was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as Irene Dunne's daughter in I Remember Mama (1948). The House UnAmerican Activities Committee investigations effectively ended Ms. Bel Geddes' starring career in films. She returned before the cameras thanks to a few brave souls like Alfred Hitchcock, who cast Barbara in his famous "Lamb to the Slaughter" episode in his weekly TV anthology (as well as three additional installments), and in a strong supporting role in his theatrical feature Vertigo (1958). Beginning in 1978, Barbara Bel Geddes played Miss Ellie Ewing on the nigthttime TV serial Dallas, a role which earned her an Emmy award; she remained with Dallas until its cancellation in 1991, save for the 1984-85 season, when she temporarily retired due to heart surgery (the role of Miss Ellie was filled that year by Donna Reed).

Trivia: The son of a sales engineer and born in New Orleans, Jeffrey Hunter was raised in Milwaukee, WI. While still in high school, Hunter acted on Milwaukee radio station WTMJ; this led to summer stock work. After serving in the Navy, Hunter attended Northwestern University, where he continued his stage appearances and was featured in the 1950 film version of Julius Caesar, which starred Charlton Heston. Attending U.C.L.A. on a scholarship, Hunter was spotted by a Hollywood agent while starring in a school production of All My Sons. He made his first "mainstream" film appearance in 20th Century Fox's Fourteen Hours, a film which also served as the debut for Grace Kelly. His movie career gained momentum after he co-starred with John Wayne in the Western classic The Searchers (1956). In 1961, Jeffrey Hunter was cast as Jesus Christ in The King of Kings; the actor's youthful appearance prompted industry wags to dub the picture "I Was a Teenaged Jesus," though in fact Hunter was 33 at the time. Few of his post-King of King roles amounted to much, and by 1967 he was one of several former Hollywood luminaries knocking about in European films. From 1950 through 1955, Hunter was married to actress Barbara Rush, who years after the divorce would remember Hunter fondly as the handsomest man she ever met. Jeffrey Hunter died of a concussion at 42, after an accidental fall in his home.

Trivia: She may have hailed from Denver, but actress Debra Paget had the sensual, exotic demeanor of an Arabian Nights princess -- which indeed she played on a few occasions. Signed by 20th Century Fox in 1949, the fresh-out-of-high-school Paget made her cinematic mark in the role of James Stewart's ill-fated Native American wife in Broken Arrow (1950). Most of her subsequent roles were merely decorative, though she was a more than adequate Cosette in the 1952 version of Les Miserables. In 1959, Paget was cast in Fritz Lang's sumptuous international production Journey to the Lost City, gaining extensive publicity coverage for her blood pressure-raising belly dance. After two failed marriages, one to director Budd Boetticher (for whom she had acted in 1955's Seven Men From Now), Debra Paget wed a wealthy Chinese-American oil executive in 1964, the same year that she retired from films.

Trivia: At age three Agnes Moorehead first appeared onstage, and at 11 she made her professional debut in the ballet and chorus of the St. Louis Opera. As a teenager she regularly sang on local radio. She earned a Ph.D. in literature and studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She began playing small roles on Broadway in 1928; shortly thereafter she shifted her focus to radio acting, becoming a regular on the radio shows March of Time, Cavalcade of America, and a soap opera series. She toured in vaudeville from 1933-36 with Phil Baker. In 1940 she joined Orson Welles's Mercury Theater Company, giving a great boost to her career. Moorehead debuted onscreen as Kane's mother in Welles' film Citizen Kane (1941). Her second film was Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination; ultimately she was nominated for an Oscars five times, never winning. In films, she tended to play authoritarian, neurotic, puritanical, or soured women, but also played a wide range of other roles, and was last onscreen in 1972. In the '50s she toured the U.S. with a stellar cast giving dramatic readings of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell. In 1954 she began touring in The Fabulous Redhead, a one-woman show she eventually took to over 200 cities across the world. She was also active on TV; later audiences remember her best as the witch Endora, Elizabeth Montgomery's mother, in the '60s TV sitcom Bewitched. Moorehead's last professional engagement was in the Broadway musical Gigi. She died of lung cancer in 1974. She was married to actors John Griffith Lee (1930-52) and Robert Gist (1953-58).

Trivia: Howard Da Silva worked the steel mills of Pennsylvania to pay his way through Carnegie Institute. After finishing his acting training, Da Silva went to work for Eva Le Galliene's theatrical troupe. He brought attention to himself by staging a one-man show, Ten Million Ghosts, which led to several years' work with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. On Broadway, the stocky, booming-voiced Da Silva created the roles of Jack Armstrong in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (a part he re-created in the 1940 film version) and Jud Frye in Oklahoma. His earliest movie appearance was in the Manhattan-filmed Jimmy Savo vehicle Once in a Blue Moon (1934), but Da Silva didn't gain cinematic prominence until signed by Paramount in the 1940s, where among many other choice assignments he was cast as the bartender in the Oscar-winning The Lost Weekend (1945). As one of most vocal and demonstrative of Hollywood's Left Wing, Da Silva became a convenient target for the House Un-American Activities Commission, and he was blacklisted. Unable to find movie or TV work, DaSilva returned to the stage in the 1950s, not facing the cameras again until 1962's David and Lisa (1962). Among his many memorable portrayals of the 1970s were Benjamin Franklin in stage and film versions of 1776, Nikita Khrushchev in the 3-hour TV drama Missiles of October, and his award-winning supporting performance in PBS' Verna: The USO Girl. Howard Da Silva also appeared in both the 1949 and 1974 versions of The Great Gatsby, playing the tragic garage owner Mr Wilson in the first version, and the Arnold Rothstein-like gambler Meyer Wolfsheim in the second.

Trivia: When he was an English student at Lehigh University, Martin Gabel decided to switch gears and become an actor, studying to that end at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 1933, he made his first Broadway appearance in Man Bites a Horse; his roles increased in size and stature in such subsequent New York productions as Dead End. Gabel joined Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre, appearing in Danton's Death, Julius Caesar and other ground-breaking productions; he also worked steadily on Welles' radio series, the Mercury Theatre on the Air. As the 1930s came to a close, Gabel joined several fellow actors in helping to raise money for the 1939 stage production of Life with Father, which would become the longest-running comedy in theatrical history. Collectors of old-time radio broadcasts know Gabel best as the fervent narrator of Norman Corwin's VJ Day drama, On a Note of Triumph. Gabel made his entree into films as the director of The Lost Moment (1947); as a movie actor, he was often cast in blunt, villainous roles, as in 1952's Deadline USA. His stage work in the 1950s and 1960s included a Tony-winning assignment in Big Fish Little Fish, and the role of Moriarty in the short-lived Sherlock Holmes musical Baker Street. Martin Gabel was the husband of actress/TV personality Arlene Francis, and the brother of actors Olive Deering and Alfred Ryder.

Trivia: Both literally and metaphorically, Grace Kelly was the cinema's fairy-tale princess; beautiful, elegant, and impossibly glamorous, she transcended the limits of Hollywood aristocracy to attain the power and glory of true royalty. Born November 12, 1929, in Philadelphia, PA, her father was a wealthy industrialist while her mother was a onetime cover girl. Her uncle, George Kelly, was the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist behind the plays The Show-Off and Craig's Wife. At the age of ten, she made her own theatrical debut in a Philadelphia-area production, and in her late teens she moved to New York, where she worked as a model while attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After turning down a Hollywood contract for fear of being typecast as a starlet, Kelly began to work in television, and in 1949 she made her Broadway debut in a revival of August Strindberg's The Father. When Hollywood again came calling, she accepted and was soon cast in a bit part in 1951's Fourteen Hours.In just her second screen appearance, Kelly co-starred in a certifiable classic, the 1952 Western High Noon. Curiously, however, she did not benefit from the film's success, and no other offers were immediately forthcoming. She agreed to a screen test for a role in Taxi! but was rejected in favor of Constance Smith. However, the screen test found its way to director John Ford, who tapped her for 1953's Mogambo. The result was a seven-year contract with MGM, as well as a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Alfred Hitchcock then enlisted Kelly's services for a pair of 1954 films, Dial M for Murder and the brilliant Rear Window; it was said that she was the perfect blonde the master director had been seeking throughout his career. She was now a major star, and when actress Jennifer Jones became unexpectedly pregnant, Paramount begged MGM to allow Kelly to take her place in 1954's The Country Girl. The studio initially refused, but she successfully battled for the role. The result was a Best Actress Oscar.After starring in MGM's Green Fire, Kelly teamed with Hitchcock for the third and final time on 1955's To Catch a Thief. While filming on the French Riviera, she met Prince Rainier III of Monaco, and the two began a romance which was soon making international headlines. After starring in 1956's High Society, a musical update of The Philadelphia Story, and a remake of the onetime Lillian Gish vehicle The Swan, Kelly announced her pending marriage to Rainier. She also announced her retirement from filmmaking to devote her full energies to her new duties as Princess of Monaco. A lavish wedding soon followed, and although it was announced in 1962 that she was to return to Hollywood to star in Hitchcock's Marnie, she later withdrew from the project and never acted again. Grace Kelly died September 14, 1982, in an auto accident after suffering a heart attack while driving.

Trivia: American actor Frank Faylen was born into a vaudeville act; as an infant, he was carried on stage by his parents, the song-and-dance team Ruf and Clark. Traveling with his parents from one engagement to another, Faylen somehow managed to complete his education at St. Joseph's Prep School in Kirkwood, Missouri. Turning pro at age 18, Faylen worked on stage until getting a Hollywood screen test in 1936. For the next nine years, Faylen played a succession of bit and minor roles, mostly for Warner Bros.; of these minuscule parts he would later say, "If you sneezed, you missed me." Better parts came his way during a brief stay at Hal Roach Studios in 1942 and 1943, but Faylen's breakthrough came at Paramount in 1945, where he was cast as Bim, the chillingly cynical male nurse at Bellevue's alcoholic ward in the Oscar-winning The Lost Weekend. Though the part lasted all of four minutes' screen time, Faylen was so effective in this unpleasant role that he became entrenched as a sadistic bully or cool villain in his subsequent films. TV fans remember Faylen best for his more benign but still snarly role as grocery store proprietor Herbert T. Gillis on the 1959 sitcom Dobie Gillis. For the next four years, Faylen gained nationwide fame for such catch-phrases as "I was in World War II--the big one--with the good conduct medal!", and, in reference to his screen son Dobie Gillis, "I gotta kill that boy someday. I just gotta." Faylen worked sporadically in TV and films after Dobie Gillis was canceled in 1963, receiving critical plaudits for his small role as an Irish stage manager in the 1968 Barbra Streisand starrer Funny Girl. The actor also made an encore appearance as Herbert T. Gillis in a Dobie Gillis TV special of the 1970s, where his "good conduct medal" line received an ovation from the studio audience. Faylen was married to Carol Hughes, an actress best-recalled for her role as Dale Arden in the 1939 serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, and was the father of another actress, also named Carol.

Trivia: American actor Jeff Corey forsook a job as sewing-machine salesman for the less stable world of New York theatre in the 1930s. The 26-year-old Corey was regarded as a valuable character-actor commodity when he arrived in Hollywood in 1940. Perhaps the best of his many early unbilled appearances was in the Kay Kyser film You'll Find Out (40), in which Corey, playing a game-show contestant (conveniently named Jeff Corey), was required to sing a song while stuffing his mouth full of crackers. The actor was busiest during the "film noir" mid-to-late 1940s, playing several weasely villain roles; it is hard to forget the image of Corey, in the role of a slimy stoolie in Burt Lancaster's Brute Force, being tied to the front of a truck and pushed directly into a hail of police bullets. Corey's film career ended abruptly in 1952 when he was unfairly blacklisted for his left-leaning political beliefs. To keep food on the table, Corey became an acting coach, eventually running one of the top training schools in the business (among his more famous pupils was Jack Nicholson). He was permitted to return to films in the 1960s, essaying such roles as a wild-eyed wino in Lady in a Cage (64), the louse who kills Kim Darby's father in True Grit (68), and a sympathetic sheriff in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (68). In addition to his film work, Jeff Corey has acted in and directed numerous TV series; he was seen as a regular on the 1985 Robert Blake series Hell Town and the 1986 Earl Hamner Jr. production Morningstar/Eveningstar. The following decade found Corey appearing in such films as Sinatra (1992), Beethoven's 2nd (1993) and the action thriller Surviving the Game (1994). Shortly after suffering a fall at his Malibu home in August of 2002, Corey died in Santa Monica due to complications resulting from the accident. He was 88.

Trivia: Signed up by MGM's dramatic school directly after graduating from the University of Southern California, American actor James Millican was groomed for that studio's stable of young leading men. Instead, he made his first film, Sign of the Cross (1932), at Paramount, then moved on to Columbia for his first important role in Mills of the Gods (1934). Possessor of an athletic physique and Irish good looks, Millican wasn't a distinctive enough personality for stardom, but came in handy for secondary roles as the hero's best friend, the boss' male secretary, and various assorted military adjutants. According to his own count, Millican also appeared in 400 westerns; while such a number is hard to document, it is true that he was a close associate of cowboy star "Wild Bill" Elliott, staging a number of personal-appearance rodeos on Elliott's behalf. Fans of baseball films will recall James Millican's persuasive performance as Bill Killefer in the Grover Cleveland Alexander biopic The Winning Team.

Trivia: Wisconsin-born actor Willard Waterman moved to Chicago in 1936, where he became a busy freelance radio actor. In 1945, he played the lead in the radio sitcom Those Websters, which led to his resettling in Hollywood. Five years later, he was chosen to replace Harold Peary on the long-running comedy series The Great Gildersleeve, a character he carried over to television in 1955. He later played featured roles in a number of TV sitcoms including Dennis the Menace. Willard Waterman's film credits include the roles of pompous Claude Upson in Auntie Mame (1958) and philandering executive Vanderhoff in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960).

Trivia: In films from 1937, silver-haired American actor Forbes Murray could be described as a less-costly Claude Rains. Murray lent his middle-aged dignity to such serials as The Spider's Web (1938), Mandrake the Magician (1940), Lone Ranger (1938), Perils of Nyoka (1942), Manhunt of Mystery Island (1945), and Radar Patrol vs. Spy King (1950). He also showed up in quite a few comedies, notably as the bank president who finances the college education of Laurel and Hardy ("Diamonds in the rough," as he describes them) in A Chump at Oxford (1940). Forbes Murray was active at least until 1955.

Trivia: A performer widely regarded as one of the most distinguished and eloquent actors of his or any generation, Ossie Davis combined an overwhelming amount of dramatic talent and instinct (evident via both stage and film work) with an indomitable fervor for social crusade. A native of Cogdell, GA, and a graduate of Howard University, Davis moved to Harlem at an early stage and trained with the Rose McClendon players. The actor then drew a considerable amount of attention -- alongside wife since 1948 Ruby Dee -- for helping to spearhead the American civil rights movement in the 1940s, over 20 years before it caught fire with the general public and mass media. Their combined efforts culminated in involvement with the triumphant March on Washington of August 1963, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech. In subsequent years, Davis also helped Dr. King raise money for the Freedom Riders and delivered a poignant eulogy at the funeral of Malcolm X. Meanwhile, Davis and Dee both established themselves as forces in theater and on film. Davis himself debuted on Broadway in 1946, and took his film bow with the 1950 No Way Out, but 13 years passed before his sophomore cinematic effort, the 1963 Gone Are the Days -- an adaptation of his own play Purlie Victorious. Unfortunately, the actor spent much of the '60s appearing in programmers that were either underappreciated (Shock Treatment, 1964) or unworthy of his talents (Sam Whiskey, 1969), and didn't fully realize his potential until he scripted and directed the 1970 Cotton Comes to Harlem, a gritty crime comedy (with a predominantly African-American cast including Godfrey Cambridge and Redd Foxx) that almost singlehandedly jump-started the blaxploitation movement and predated Sweet Sweetback and Shaft by a year. Several additional directorial projects followed throughout the 1970s and '80s and found Davis growing deeper and more profound, and setting his sights higher; these included the ambitious -- if not quite successful -- Kongi's Harvest (1971) and the finely-wrought, socially charged coming-of-age drama Black Girl (1972), arguably Davis' best film. Unfortunately, Davis' third and fourth efforts behind the camera, Gordon's War (1973) and Countdown at Kusini (1976), disappointed on many counts, relegating him (for better or worse) back to acting. He appeared in the racially themed, made-for-television dramas Roots (1977), King: The Martin Luther King Story (1978, in which he played Dr. King Sr.), and Roots: The Next Generations (1979), then -- around a decade later -- achieved a career resurgence thanks to the intelligence and bravura of wunderkind Spike Lee, who cast Davis in six major films: School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992, as an off-camera narrator), Get on the Bus (1996), and She Hate Me (2004). Two of those films also included Dee in the cast. Davis also enjoyed a renewed profile on television during the early '90s when he was tapped to play a regular character on the charming and laid-back Burt Reynolds sitcom Evening Shade (1990-1994); he portrayed Ponder Blue, the series' narrator and the owner of a barbecue restaurant. Davis remained not only active but astonishingly prolific over the following ten years. Subsequent projects included small supporting roles in Grumpy Old Men (1993), The Client (1994), and Doctor Dolittle (1998), and participation in a series of documentaries, among them Christianity: The First Thousand Years (1998) and We Shall Not Be Moved (2001). Davis died in February 2005, in Miami, while shooting the movie Retirement. He was 87. Davis and Dee co-authored a dual autobiography, In This Life Together, in 1998.

Trivia: American actor David Burns began his U.S. in the early '40s and became a well-known, reliable supporting player. He has also worked in films and on TV.

Trivia: American actor Henry Slate was an Army private when he made his first film appearance in 1944, repeating his stage performance as one of the Andrews Sisters in the all-serviceman drama Winged Victory. He went on to play supporting roles in a number of major Hollywood productions, often cast as military officers and working stiffs. From 1960 to 1961, he was seen as the colorfully yclept Bulldog Lovey on TV's Adventures in Paradise. Henry Slate spent the latter stages of his screen career playing character bits in a steady stream of Disney pictures.

Trivia: Brooklyn-born Harvey Lembeck was a nightclub and Broadway comedian at the time of his 1951 film bow in You're in the Navy Now. The roly-poly, nasal-voiced Lembeck was most often cast as the wise-guy comedy relief in war films, most notably Stalag 17 (1953), in which Lembeck and bearlike Robert Strauss repeated their stage roles as "court jesters" in a dismal POW camp (the two actors would later be reteamed in the 1961 Jack Webb picture The Last Time I Saw Archie, not to mention a series of TV commercials in the mid-1960s). Harvey remained in uniform for a four-year hitch as Corporal Barbella on the popular 1950s Phil Silvers sitcom You'll Never Get Rich. In 1963's Beach Party, Lembeck made the first of several sidesplitting appearances as leather-jacketed Brando wannabe Eric von Zipper, whose attempts to prove his toughness to his fellow bikers always came a-cropper; in Beach Blanket Bingo, for example, he was cut in twain by a buzzsaw, moaning "Why Me?" even as his two halves fell bloodlessly to the floor. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Harvey Lembeck directed several TV sitcom episodes, and also operated a training school for aspiring comedians; carrying on the "family business" after Harvey's death was his son, actor/director Michael Lembeck.

Trivia: Born Boris Milanovich, Dexter was a square-jawed supporting player and former lead, often cast in tough character roles. As early as his first film, 1950's The Asphalt Jungle, the talented Dexter found himself overshadowed by the star power of Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore, Louis Calhern and Marilyn Monroe. Occasionally, Dexter was cast in a role that stuck in the memory banks, such as Bugsy Siegel in 1960's The George Raft Story. He also gained a degree of fame as the producer of such worthwhile films as The Naked Runner (1967) and The Lawyer (1970) and Little Fauss and big Halsy(1970); reportedly, he was able to gain a foothold as a producer thanks to Frank Sinatra, whom Dexter once saved from drowning. Brad Dexter married and divorced singer Peggy Lee.

Trivia: Born in New York City in 1921, actor and voice performer Shepard Menken began his career at the age of 11, when he started appearing on children's radio programs. After high school, Menken attended Columbia University, and later studied performing arts at the Neighborhood Playhouse Theater and the Juilliard School of Music. Menken made his film debut in 1949 with a supporting role in The Red Menace, and eventually appeared onscreen in 17 movies. Menken also worked steadily as a television actor, appearing on such series as I Love Lucy, I Spy, and The Wild, Wild West. He was also in demand as a voice talent, working on animated cartoons for Hana-Barbara, UPA, and Marvel Productions, as well as advertising spots for Star Kist Tuna and Mattel Toys; his was the voice intoning, "The only way to fly!" in Western Airlines' spots in the 1960s. In 1963, Menken formed his own company, Malibu Films, which specialized in educational and industrial films. Menken died in 1999 of natural causes.

Trivia: Blonde, loquacious American actress Joyce Van Patten was being sent out for modelling assignments at the age of eight months. Her stagestruck mother advertised Van Patten and older brother Dick as "the Van Patten Kids," ready and willing to step into any juvenile roles available. At age 5, Joyce made her Broadway debut in Love's Old Sweet Song, which also featured Dick. Joyce was nine years old when she won the Donaldson award for her performance in the stage drama Tomorrow the World. She interrupted her stage career for a brief marriage at age 16 (her equally brief second marriage was to actor Martin Balsam), then at 20 played her first adult role in the Broadway comedy Desk Set. Her first film assignment was an unbilled bit in the Manhattan-lensed Fourteen Hours (1951), and her first regular TV stint was on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns in the late '50s. Joyce has since been seen on a weekly basis in such TV series as The Danny Kaye Show (1963-66), The Good Guys (1968) (as Herb Edelman's good-natured wife), The Don Rickles Show (1972) (as Don's goodnatured wife) and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour (1979) (as Mary's personal secretary, yet again good-natured). Joyce Van Patten's films have included The Goddess (1958), I Love You Alice B. Toklas (1968), St. Elmo's Fire (1984), and a rare "bitchy" appearance as the antagonistic athletic coach in The Bad News Bears (1976).

Trivia: Trained in prep school for a career as a businessman, Baltimore-born Russell Hicks chucked his predestined lifestyle for a theatrical career, over the protests of his family. As an actor, Hicks came full circle, spending the bulk of his career playing businessmen! Though he claimed to have appeared in D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), Hicks' earliest recorded Hollywood job occured in 1920, when he was hired as an assistant casting director for Famous Players (later Paramount). Making his stage debut in It Pays to Smile, Hicks acted in stock companies and on Broadway before his official film bow in 1934's Happiness Ahead. The embodiment of the small-town business booster or chairman of the board, the tall, authoritative Hicks frequently used his dignified persona to throw the audience off guard in crooked or villainous roles. He was glib confidence man J. Frothingham Waterbury in W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick (1940) ("I want to be honest with you in the worst way!"), and more than once he was cast as the surprise killer in murder mysteries. Because of his robust, athletic physique, Hicks could also be seen as middle-aged adventurers, such as one of The Three Musketeers in the 1939 version of that classic tale, and as the aging Robin Hood in 1946's Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946). Russell Hicks continued accepting film assignments until 1956's Seventh Cavalry.

Trivia: American actress Jane Darwell was the daughter of a Missouri railroad executive. Despite her father's disapproval, she spent most of her youth acting in circuses, opera troupes and stock companies, making her film debut in 1912. Even in her early thirties, Darwell specialized in formidable "grande dame" roles, usually society matrons or strict maiden aunts. Making an easy transition to talking pictures, Darwell worked primarily in small character parts (notably as governesses and housekeepers in the films of Shirley Temple) until 1939, when her role as the James Brothers' mother in Jesse James began a new career direction--now she was most often cast as indomitable frontierswomen, unbending in the face of hardship and adversity. It was this quality that led Darwell to be cast in her favorite role as Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), for which she won an Oscar. Darwell continued to work until illness crept upon her in the late 1950s. Even so, Darwell managed to essay a handful of memorable parts on TV and in movies into the 1960s; her last film role was as the "Bird Woman" in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964).

Trivia: The son of actor Robert Keith (1896-1966), Brian Keith made his first film appearance in 1924's Pied Piper Malone, when he was well-below the age of consent. During the war years, Keith served in the Marines, winning a Navy Air Medal; after cessation of hostilities, he began his acting career in earnest. At first billing himself as Robert Keith Jr., he made his 1946 Broadway debut in Heyday, then enjoyed a longer run as Mannion in Mister Roberts (1948), which featured his father as "Doc." His film career proper began in 1952; for the rest of the decade, Keith played good guys, irascible sidekicks and cold-blooded heavies with equal aplomb. Beginning with Ten Who Dared (1959), Keith became an unofficial "regular" in Disney Films, his performances alternately subtle (The Parent Trap) and bombastic. Of his 1970s film efforts, Keith was seen to best advantage as Teddy Roosevelt in The Wind and the Lion (1975). In television since the medium was born, Keith has starred in several weekly series, including The Crusader (1955-56), The Little People (aka The Brian Keith Show, 1972-74) and Lew Archer (1975). His longest-running and perhaps best-known TV endeavors were Family Affair (1966-71), in which he played the uncharacteristically subdued "Uncle Bill" and the detective series Hardcastle & McCormick (1983-86). His most fascinating TV project was the 13-week The Westerner (1960), created by Sam Peckinpah, in which he played an illiterate cowpoke with an itchy trigger finger. Keith's personal favorite of all his roles is not to be found in his film or TV output; it is the title character in Hugh Leonard's stage play Da. Plagued by emphysema and lung cancer while apparently still reeling emotionally from the suicide of his daughter Daisy, 75-year-old Brian Keith was found dead of a gunshot wound by family members in his Malibu home. Police ruled the death a suicide. Just prior to his death, Keith had completed a supporting role in the TNT miniseries Rough Riders.