Trivia: An alumnus of Eastern New Mexico University, American actor Ronny Cox received one the best early film showcases an actor could ask for. In 1972, he was cast as one of the four unfortunate rafters in Deliverance; it was Cox who engaged in the celebrated "dueling banjos" sequence with enigmatic albino boy Hoyt J. Pollard. Two years later, Cox found himself in Apple's Way, a homey TV dramatic weekly described as a "modern Waltons". Most of his subsequent roles were in this benign, All-American vein--and then Cox shocked his followers by portraying Jerry Rubin in the 1975 PBS TV drama The Trial of the Chicago Seven. During this telecast, Cox became one of the first (if not the first) actors to mouth a now-familiar expletive of disgust on American television. As his physique thickened and his hairline thinned in the 1980s, Cox was much in demand in films as a corporate villain, notably in Paul Verhoeven's Robocop (1984) and Total Recall (1990). The flip side of this hard-nosed screen image was his portrayal of the apoplectic but scrupulously honest police chief in Eddie Murphy's Beverly Hills Cop films.

Trivia: Although many people assume that The Exorcist (1974) was American actress Linda Blair's film debut, she had actually been working in commercials since age six. Blair was chosen from a field of 500 hopefuls for Exorcist because of her resemblance to the film's star, Ellen Burstyn. To the casual viewer, the film, which dealt with the Devil's possession of an innocent preteen girl, was hardly the sort of fare that any responsible parent would allow their child to appear in. But the Exorcist's director, William Friedkin, was careful to prearrange the special effects (head turning around, bloody body wounds, vomiting green bile) with the least amount of danger or trauma for Blair. From all reports, she handled the assignment like a trouper, though she balked at having her hair messed up for the purposes of the plot. Blair was nominated for an Academy Award for her Exorcist work, but this campaign was scuttled when it was learned that, not only had the girl been extensively doubled by a dummy, but her horrendous "Satan" voice, explicit obscenities and all, had been dubbed by adult actress Mercedes McCambridge. A major celebrity at 15, Blair was able for a while to parlay her Exorcist work into a series of demanding film and TV roles, most of which cast her as a much-abused victim. Her rape scene in the TV movie Born Innocent was so graphic that the network was forced to cut the scene when the film was rerun. In other appearances, Blair played a teen alcoholic, a kidnap victim, a heart-transplant patient on an endangered airliner, and her Exorcist role again in Exorcist II (1977). By this time, Blair was unable to maintain the equilibrium of her career, which degenerated into exploitative crime or girls-in-prison films. More recently, Blair was seen in Repossessed (1990), a ham-handed spoof of the film that made her famous.

Trivia: Actor Brian McNamara got his start in show business in the 80's, with a string of TV appearances on shows like St. Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues. He would go on to rack up roles in feature films, like Short Circuit and Arachnophobia, eventually being cast as General Holden on the hit wartime drama Army Wives, which he would stick with for several seasons.

Trivia: Actress Diane Baker's well-scrubbed, all-American beauty has frequently been employed as a cool veneer for film characters of smoldering passions. The daughter of actress Dorothy Harrington, Diane was studying at USC when she was tapped for her first film role as Millie Perkins' sister in 20th Century-Fox's The Diary of Anne Frank (1959); the studio then cast Diane as Pat Boone's "girl back home," who didn't get to go along on Boone's Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). She remained at Fox until 1962, essaying the title role in the studio's re-remake of Tess of the Storm Country (1961). Her most famous screen assignment was at Columbia, where she portrayed axe murderess Joan Crawford's supposedly well-balanced daughter in Straitjacket (1963). Diane became a documentary director in the 1970s with Ashanya, and a producer with Never Never Land (1982). The best of Diane Baker's latter-day roles was the media-savvy politico mother of the kidnap victim in Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Trivia: At 19, he was diagnosed with malignant melanoma (skin cancer), the same disease that had claimed his father a year earlier. Moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting when he was 23. Met his wife while filming a movie in Berlin, Germany. With his wife, founded an organization called Balanced Life, geared at helping people improve their lives. Is a self-taught artist who was inspired to get back into painting after a visit to the Sistine Chapel. Owns several galleries across the country where he shows his art. Is a black belt in two different forms of karate.

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: 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: 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.

Trivia: Supporting actress, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: Paul Dooley is fondly remembered by fans of '80s cinema as the forgetful but well-intending father of a disgruntled Molly Ringwald in the John Hughes teen classic Sixteen Candles (1984). The longtime character actor's droopy, distinctive features and endearing onscreen warmth have kept him a familiar figure in both film and television. A Parkersurg, WV, native who originally aspired to become a cartoonist, Dooley drew comic strips for a local newspaper before entering the navy. Upon discharge, the future actor entered college, where he discovered his passion for the stage. A move to New York found the aspiring actor landing frequent stage work, and after discovering a previously untapped ability for comedy, Dooley tried his hand at standup for about five years. Always looking to expand his skills, he made his film debut in the 1970 comedy The Out-of-Towners. From 1971 to 1972, Dooley was also head writer for the popular children's television series The Electric Company. After showing promise in such late-'70s efforts as Slap Shot (1977) and A Wedding (1978), Dooley made a big impression with his supporting role as the lead character's worrisome father in Breaking Away (1979). Though he was overlooked at Oscar time, he was nominated for a New York Film Critics Circle award and won the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actor. He kicked off the most successful decade of his film career with a performance as Wimpy in the much-maligned Robert Altman musical comedy Popeye (1980). Besides his memorable turn in Sixteen Candles, Dooley also delivered hilarious performances in the 1980s films Strange Brew (1983) and John Cassavetes' Big Trouble (1985). Fans of the extraterrestrial comedy series ALF will also remember him as the curiously named Whizzer Deaver.Though his feature roles through the 1990s largely consisted of such B-grade fare as My Boyfriend's Back (1993) and Error in Judgment (1998), Dooley managed to stay on top thanks to parts in such popular television series as Mad About You, Dream On, Grace Under Fire, and The Practice. He also took on occasional roles in more notable films, including Waiting for Guffman (1996), Clockwatchers (1997), Happy, Texas (1999), and Runaway Bride (also 1999), which served to remind movie buffs just how funny the talented comic actor could be when given the opportunity. Dooley's performances in such later efforts as Insomnia (2002) hinted at a darker side rarely explored by the usually jovial actor. In 2003, after re-teaming with Waiting for Guffman cohort Christopher Guest to blow A Mighty Wind, he took a supporting role in former MTV beauty queen Jenny McCarthy's comedy Dirty Love.

Trivia: As a charter member of two white-hot acts, Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash (intermittently rechristened Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young), rocker Stephen Stills was wholly inseparable from the folk-rock boom that swept through the American music industry during the late '60s and early '70s. Stills began life in Dallas, TX, and gravitated to music on a prodigious level. By the age of 15, he began playing professional gigs and touring, then attended college but dropped out to pursue success as a folk-rock musician and moved to Manhattan. Fame indeed arrived, first as a guitar player with the Greenwich Village-based ensemble the Au Go-Go Singers (where he met the man who became one of his longtime collaborators, Ohioan Richie Furay), and then -- following a tour of Canada and relocation to Southern California -- as a member of the short-lived but enormously influential band Buffalo Springfield (Stills, Furay, Jim Messina, Neil Young, Bruce Palmer, and Dewey Martin). The group, whose success peaked when it was selected as the resident house-band at the Whisky-A-Go-Go in Hollywood, only issued three albums from 1966 through 1968, but made musical history in the process. After 1968, Stills broke away from Buffalo and teamed up with former Byrds member David Crosby and former Hollies mainstay Graham Nash to create the harmonizing vocal group Crosby, Stills & Nash, which immediately rocketed to superstardom. Over the years, the members separated and reunited intermittently and erratically, joined on occasion by Young; following an initial period of celebrity and various personal problems of the members (including Crosby's much-publicized drug bouts), they ultimately evolved into one of the most popular touring bands on the revival circuit during the '90s and 2000s.While this was occurring, Stills attained a great deal of press and popularity as a solo act. His releases, including Stephen Stills (1970), Stephen Stills 2 (1971), Illegal Stills (1976), and Stills Alone (1991), each connected with a massive audience, though 1978's Thoroughfare Gap (a misguided attempt to do a disco album) marked an unfortunate exception. He scored a massive hit with the 1970 single "Love the One You're With," which turned into something of a trademark tune.Cinematically, Stills made the majority of appearances in concert films, beginning with the legendary 1970 opus Woodstock, and continuing on with such outings as Celebration at Big Sur (1971), No Nukes (1980), and Crosby, Stills & Nash: Long Time Comin' (1990). In 2008, Neil Young (under his pseudonym of Bernard Shakey) helmed a much-publicized documentary on CSNY's 2006 Freedom of Speech tour, affording ample time to the group's anti-Iraq War stance and the war, per se.