Trivia: Universally regarded among the screen's greatest actors, Spencer Tracy was a most unlikely leading man. Stocky, craggy-faced, and gruff, he could never be considered a matinee idol, yet few stars enjoyed greater or more consistent success. An uncommonly versatile performer, his consistently honest and effortless performances made him a favorite of both audiences and critics throughout a career spanning well over three decades. Born April 5, 1900, in Milwaukee, WI, Tracy was expelled from some 15 different elementary schools prior to attending Rippon College, where he discovered and honed a talent for debating; eventually, he considered acting as a logical extension of his skills, and went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. His first professional work cast him as a robot in a stage production of R.U.R. at a salary of ten dollars a week. He made his Broadway debut in 1923's A Royal Fandango and later co-starred in a number of George M. Cohan vehicles. Tracy's performance as an imprisoned killer in 1930's The Last Mile made him a stage star, and during its Broadway run he made a pair of shorts for Vitaphone, The Hard Guy and Taxi Talks. Screen tests for MGM, Universal, and Warners were all met with rejection, however, but when John Ford insisted on casting Tracy as the lead in his prison drama Up the River, Fox offered a five-year contract.Tracy's second film was 1931's Quick Millions, in which he portrayed a racketeer. He was frequently typecast as a gangster during his early career, or at the very least a tough guy, and like the majority of Fox productions throughout the early part of the decade, his first several films were unspectacular. His big break arrived when Warners entered a feud with Jimmy Cagney, who was scheduled to star in 1933's 20,000 Years in Sing Sing; when he balked, the studio borrowed Tracy, and the picture was a hit. His next two starring roles in The Face in the Sky and the Preston Sturges epic The Power and the Glory were also successful, earning very positive critical notice. Still, Fox continued to offer Tracy largely low-rent projects, despite extending his contract through 1937. Regardless, much of his best work was done outside of the studio grounds; for United Artists, he starred in 1934's Looking for Trouble, and for MGM starred as The Show-Off. After filming 1935's It's a Small World, executives cast Tracy as yet another heavy in The Farmer Takes a Wife; he refused to accept the role and was fired. Despite serious misgivings, MGM signed him on. However, the studio remained concerned about his perceived lack of sex appeal and continued giving the majority of plum roles to Clark Gable. As a consequence, Tracy's first MGM offerings -- 1935's Riff Raff, The Murder Man, and 1936's Whipsaw -- were by and large no better than his Fox vehicles, but he next starred in Fritz Lang's excellent Fury. For the big-budget disaster epic San Francisco, Tracy earned the first of nine Academy Award nominations -- a record for male stars -- and in 1937 won his first Oscar for his work in Victor Fleming's Captains Courageous. Around the release of the 1938 smash Test Pilot, Time magazine declared him "cinema's number one actor's actor," a standing solidified later that year by Boys' Town, which won him an unprecedented second consecutive Academy Award. After 1939's Stanley and Livingstone, Tracy starred in the hit Northwest Passage, followed by a turn as Edison the Man. With the success of 1941's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he even usurped Gable's standing as MGM's top draw.Tracy was happily married to actress Louise Treadwell when he teamed with Katharine Hepburn in 1942's Woman of the Year. It was the first in a long series of collaborations that established them as one of the screen's greatest pairings, and soon the two actors entered an offscreen romance which continued for the remainder of Tracy's life. They were clearly soulmates, yet Tracy, a devout Catholic, refused to entertain the thought of a divorce; instead, they carried on their affair in secrecy, their undeniable chemistry spilling over onto their onscreen meetings like Keeper of the Flame. Without Hepburn, Tracy next starred in 1943's A Guy Named Joe, another major hit, as was the following year's 30 Seconds Over Tokyo. Without Love, another romantic comedy with Hepburn, premiered in 1945; upon its release Tracy returned to Broadway, where he headlined The Rugged Path. Returning to Hollywood, he appeared in three more films with Hepburn -- The Sea of Grass, Frank Capra's State of the Union, and George Cukor's sublime Adam's Rib -- and in 1950 also starred as Vincente Minnelli's Father of the Bride, followed a year later by the sequel Father's Little Dividend. On Hepburn's return from shooting The African Queen, they teamed with Cukor in 1952's Pat and Mike. Without Hepburn, Tracy and Cukor also filmed The Actress the following year. Venturing outside of the MGM confines for the first time in years, he next starred in the 1954 Western Broken Lance. The well-received Bad Day at Black Rock followed, but as the decade wore on, Tracy was clearly growing more and more unhappy with life at MGM -- the studio had changed too much over the years, and in 1955 they agreed to cut him loose. He first stopped at Paramount for 1956's The Mountain, reuniting with Hepburn for Fox's Desk Set a year later. At Warners, Tracy then starred in the 1958 adaptation of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, a major box-office disaster; however, The Last Hurrah signalled a rebound. After 1960's Inherit the Wind, Tracy subsequently reunited with director Stanley Kramer for 1961's Judgment at Nuremburg and the 1963 farce It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The film was Tracy's last for four years. Finally, in 1967 he and Hepburn reunited one final time in Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner; it was another great success, but a success he did not live to see. Tracy died on June 10, 1967, just weeks after wrapping production.

Trivia: "I'm a personality as well as an actress," Katharine Hepburn once declared. "Show me an actress who isn't a personality, and you'll show me a woman who isn't a star." Hepburn's bold, distinctive personality was apparent almost from birth. She inherited from her doctor father and suffragette mother her three most pronounced traits: an open and ever-expanding mind, a healthy body (maintained through constant rigorous exercise), and an inability to tell anything less than the truth. Hepburn was more a personality than an actress when she took the professional plunge after graduating from Bryn Mawr in 1928; her first stage parts were bits, but she always attracted attention with her distinct New England accent and her bony, sturdy frame. The actress' outspokenness lost her more jobs than she received, but, in 1932, she finally scored on Broadway with the starring role in The Warrior's Husband. She didn't want to sign the film contract offered her by RKO, so she made several "impossible" demands concerning salary and choice of scripts. The studios agreed to her terms, and, in 1932, she made her film debut opposite John Barrymore in A Bill of Divorcement (despite legends to the contrary, the stars got along quite well). Critical reaction to Hepburn's first film set the tone for the next decade: Some thought that she was the freshest and most original actress in Hollywood, while others were irritated by her mannerisms and "artificial" speech patterns. For her third film, Morning Glory (1933), Hepburn won the first of her four Oscars. But despite initial good response to her films, Hepburn lost a lot of popularity during her RKO stay because of her refusal to play the "Hollywood game." She dressed in unfashionable slacks and paraded about without makeup; refused to pose for pinup pictures, give autographs, or grant interviews; and avoided mingling with her co-workers. As stories of her arrogance and self-absorption leaked out, moviegoers responded by staying away from her films. The fact that Hepburn was a thoroughly dedicated professional -- letter-perfect in lines, completely prepared and researched in her roles, the first to arrive to the set each day and the last to leave each evening -- didn't matter in those days, when style superseded substance. Briefly returning to Broadway in 1933's The Lake, Hepburn received devastating reviews from the same critics who found her personality so bracing in The Warrior's Husband. The grosses on her RKO films diminished with each release -- understandably so, since many of them (Break of Hearts [1935], Mary of Scotland [1936]) were not very good. She reclaimed the support of RKO executives after appearing in the moneymaking Alice Adams (1935) -- only to lose it again by insisting upon starring in Sylvia Scarlett (1936), a curious exercise in sexual ambiguity that lost a fortune. Efforts to "humanize" the haughty Hepburn personality in Stage Door (1937) and the delightful Bringing Up Baby (1938) came too late; in 1938, she was deemed "box-office poison" by an influential exhibitor's publication. Hepburn's career might have ended then and there, but she hadn't been raised to be a quitter. She went back to Broadway in 1938 with a part written especially for her in Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story. Certain of a hit, she bought the film rights to the play; thus, when it ended up a success, she was able to negotiate her way back into Hollywood on her own terms, including her choice of director and co-stars. Produced by MGM in 1940, the film version was a box-office triumph, and Hepburn had beaten the "poison" label. In her next MGM film, Woman of the Year (1942), Hepburn co-starred with Spencer Tracy, a copacetic teaming that endured both professionally and personally until Tracy's death in 1967. After several years of off-and-on films, Hepburn scored another success with 1951's The African Queen, marking her switch from youngish sophisticates to middle-aged character leads. After 1962's Long Day's Journey Into Night, Hepburn withdrew from performing for nearly five years, devoting her attention to her ailing friend and lover Tracy. She made the last of her eight screen appearances with Tracy in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), which also featured her niece Katharine Houghton. Hepburn won her second Oscar for this film, and her third the following year for A Lion in Winter; the fourth was bestowed 13 years later for On Golden Pond (1981). When she came back to Broadway for the 1969 musical Coco, Hepburn proved that the years had not mellowed her; she readily agreed to preface her first speech with a then-shocking profanity, and, during one performance, she abruptly dropped character to chew out an audience member for taking flash pictures. Hepburn made the first of her several television movies in 1975, co-starring with Sir Laurence Olivier in Love Among the Ruins -- and winning an Emmy award, as well. Her last Broadway appearance was in 1976's A Matter of Gravity. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Hepburn continued to star on TV and in films, announcing on each occasion that it would be her last performance. She also began writing books and magazine articles, each of them an extension of her personality: self-centered, well-organized, succinct, and brutally frank (especially regarding herself). While she remained a staunch advocate of physical fitness, Hepburn suffered from a genetic condition, a persistent tremor that caused her head to shake -- an affliction she blithely incorporated into her screen characters. In 1994, Warren Beatty coaxed Hepburn out of her latest retirement to appear as his aristocratic grand-aunt in Love Affair. Though appearing frailer than usual, Hepburn was in complete control of herself and her craft, totally dominating her brief scenes. And into her nineties and on the threshold of her tenth decade, Katharine Hepburn remained the consummate personality, actress, and star.On June 29, 2003 Katharine Hepburn died of natural causes in Old Saybrook, Connetticut. She was 96.

Trivia: Gig Young started his movie career billed under his birth name, Byron Barr. He made his debut in You're in the Army Now (1941). The following year, he played in The Gay Sisters playing a larger supporting role, a character called Gig Young. While he would he would still continue going by Byron Barr for a while, he would eventually change it to Gig Young because there was an actor named Byron Barr already in Hollywood. When not going by his birth name, Young sometimes billed himself as Bryant Fleming. During WWI, Young was part of the Coast Guard. Upon his discharge, he returned to his movie career. Dashing and witty, Young often played second bananas and was frequently cast as a carefree bachelor who was more interested in fun than commitment. He also played guys who were always unlucky in love in romantic comedies. Occasionally Young would win the lead in B-movies. In 1969, Young earned an Oscar for his performance in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? On television, Young occasionally guest starred on series and movies. In 1976, he starred in the short-lived series Gibbsville. In 1978, Young and his bride of three weeks (he had been married four times before) were found dead of gunshot wounds in his Manhattan apartment. In Young's hand was the pistol and police surmised that he had shot her and then himself. His wife was Kim Schmidt, a 31-year-old German actress.

Trivia: A lovable star with a vivacious personality, mesmerizing smile, and big blue eyes, Joan Blondell, the daughter of stage comic Eddie Blondell (one of the original Katzenjammer Kids), spent her childhood touring the world with her vaudevillian parents and appearing with them in shows. She joined a stock company at age 17, then came to New York after winning a Miss Dallas beauty contest. She then appeared in several Broadway productions and in the Ziegfield Follies before being paired with another unknown, actor James Cagney, in the stage musical Penny Arcade; a year later this became the film Sinners Holiday, propelling her to stardom. Blondell spent eight years under contract with Warner Bros., where she was cast as dizzy blondes and wisecracking gold-diggers. She generally appeared in comedies and musicals and was paired ten times on the screen with actor Dick Powell, to whom she was married from 1936-45. Through the '30s and '40s she continued to play cynical, wisecracking girls with hearts of gold appearing in as many as ten films a year during the '30s. In the '50s she left films for the stage, but then came back to do more mature character parts. Blondell is the author of a roman a clef novel titled Center Door Fancy (1972) and was also married to producer Mike Todd (1947-50).

Trivia: A bona fide member of the American aristocracy (her father was Wall Street magnate E.F. Hutton and her mother, Marjorie Merriweather Post, was heiress to a huge cereal fortune), Dina Merrill (born Nedinia Hutton) dropped out of George Washington University in the 1940s to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and become an actress. She spent ten years on-stage, including Broadway, performed on television, and made her Hollywood debut in Desk Set (1957). The cool, sophisticated, blonde supporting actress was typically cast as an heiress or socialite. She married actor Cliff Robertson in 1966 and took a decade off, but for a few television movie appearances, to raise a family until returning to films in 1975. In 1988, she launched Pavilion, an entertainment development and production company with her new lover, investment banker Ted Hartley. The two married in 1989. After the late '80s, Merrill started appearing more frequently in features and television movies.

Trivia: Petite, dark-haired Sue Randall only ever made two appearances on the big screen, in a supporting role in Walter Lang's battle-of-the-sexes comedy Desk Set (1957), portraying a member of Katharine Hepburn's research staff, and co-starring in O'Dale Ireland's exploitation thriller Date Bait (1960), made for Roger Corman's low-budget Filmgroup company. Millions of baby-boomer television viewers, however, will always remember Randall fondly for her portrayal of Miss Alice Landers, Beaver Cleaver's favorite teacher on Leave It to Beaver; from 1958 through 1962, the object of a crush on the part of the series' young hero as well as his eternal admiration, Miss Landers was virtually a fixture in American popular culture for five years. Randall also had a starring role in the 1955 series Valiant Lady and appeared on series such as Sea Hunt, Perry Mason, The Fugitive, 77 Sunset Strip, The F.B.I., Gunsmoke, Wendy and Me, and I Spy, before retiring in 1965. She was one of the few surviving major supporting cast members who did not participate in Still the Beaver (1983), the revival of the series. Randall died of cancer in 1984 at the age of 49.

Trivia: Character actress of TV and movies, onscreen from 1953.

Trivia: Coming to films late in life, towering supporting player Nicholas Joy had studied at London's Royal Academy prior to making his stage debut in 1910. French-born of British parentage, Joy quickly became a popular character actor on both sides of the Atlantic, having made an auspicious Broadway debut in Henry V in 1912. Onscreen from 1947, Joy usually played pompous characters and is perhaps best remembered as the archbishop in Joan of Arc (1948) and as the renowned defense lawyer-turned-murder victim in Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer (1949). Joy, who also played Lynn Bari's father in the short-lived 1952 television situation comedy Boss Lady, retired in the late '50s.

Trivia: American actress Merry Anders was a professional model when she signed her first studio contract in 1951. After two years of uncredited bits in such 20th Century-Fox features as Belles on Their Toes (1952) and Titanic (1953), Merry found more rewarding work on TV. From 1953 through 1955, she appeared in The Stu Erwin Show, replacing Ann Todd in the role of Joyce, Erwin's oldest daughter. While most of her film assignments were along the bargain-basement lines of The Dalton Girls (1957) and The Hypnotic Eye (1960), Merry built up a reputation as "queen" of the TV pilot films. If she appeared as guest star in the pilot episode of a potential series, that series would most likely be sold. Merry would be the last person to insist that she was a great actress; her "versatility" in her many TV roles consisted of changing her hair color as often as possible. It was as a redhead that Merry was cast in the lead of the syndicated sitcom How to Marry a Millionaire, which ran from 1958 through 1960. After this assignment, Merry continued to show up as a blonde, brunette and redhead in such deathless movie offerings as Women of the Prehistoric Planet (1966) and Legacy of Blood (1973). In the late 1960s, she had a semi-recurring role on Dragnet as a super-efficient policewoman; the character was meant to develop into a love interest for Joe Friday (Jack Webb), but the series never went in that direction. It can be argued that Merry Anders' most memorable performance (and the one most often seen these days) was as a woman who is drowned in a phone booth (!) on a 1966 episode of Get Smart.

Trivia: Tiny, bright-eyed character actress Ida Moore made her first film in 1925, but did not actively pursue moviemaking until well into her sixties. Nearly always cast as a twinkly grandma or man-hungry spinster, Ms. Moore enlivened the proceedings of many a film comedy of the 1940s and 1950s. Her most ardent fans treasure those moments wherein Moore was cast against type as a crook or confidence trickster (vide the 1949 Bowery Boys comedy Hold That Baby). Ida Moore somewhat surprisingly became a cult figure to film buffs of the 1960s, warranting a write-up in the encyclopedic The American Movies Reference Book: The Sound Era, a 1968 volume that curiously couldn't find room for several other deserving "Moores" like Victor and Colleen.