Trivia: Seductive, whiskey-voiced, one-of-a-kind American leading lady Tallulah Bankhead, the daughter of the Speaker of the House of Representatives William Brockman Bankhead, began her stage career at age 15 after being educated in a convent. She did more stage work plus two silent films, then went to London in 1923 where she became a celebrity while performing brilliantly in a string of plays. The hot-blooded Bankhead preferred to live dangerously and became notorious for her uninhibited behavior (such as taking off her clothes in public), a tendency many have seen as detrimental to the use of her considerable talents. She appeared in two British silents before coming to America in 1930; signed by Paramount, she began her movie career in earnest but remained more a fixture of Broadway, where she shone in plays such as The Little Foxes (for which she won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award in 1939, an award she won again in 1942 for The Skin of Our Teeth). Her movie career was spotty and included several box office disasters, perhaps because her extravagant, larger-than-life personality was not done justice on the screen; her more memorable appearances include a celebrated performance in Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944), for which she was cited by New York Film Critics. Bankhead made only three more films after Lifeboat. She is divorced from actor John Emery. In 1952, she wrote her autobiography, Tallulah.

Trivia: John Hodiak began his radio acting career in Detroit, where he'd previously worked in the warehouse at the Chevrolet motor company. Signed to an MGM contract in 1942, Hodiak did some of his best work on loan-out to 20th Century-Fox, where he appeared as a communist stoker in Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) and as the humanitarian US army officer in A Bell for Adano (1945). Putting his film career on the back burner in the 1950s, Hodiak made several notable Broadway appearances; he originated the role of Lieutenant Maryk in Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. From 1946 through 1953, Hodiak was married to actress Anne Baxter. While shaving in his Tarzana, California home, 41-year-old John Hodiak suffered a sudden and fatal heart attack.

Trivia: The son of legendary opera star Leo Slezak, Walter Slezak was a medical student before settling into the comfortable position of bank clerk. Slezak was coerced by his friend, actor/director Michael Curtiz, to accept an acting role in Curtiz's 1922 spectacular Sodom and Gomorrah -- and with this film, Slezak's career in the world of finance came to an end. Those familiar with Walter Slezak only as the corpulent supporting player in such films as Sinbad the Sailor (1947), People Will Talk (1951), and Emil and the Detectives (1964) will be surprised upon viewing Slezak's appearances as a slim, romantic leading man in his German silent films. Unable to keep his weight under control, Slezak decided around 1930 to become a character actor. He made his Broadway debut in the 1930 production Meet My Sister. After 12 years of stage work, Slezak was cast in his first American film, 1942's Once Upon a Honeymoon, playing the fifth-columnist husband of social-climbing Ginger Rogers. Equally adept at comedy and villainy, Slezak was able to combine these two extremes in such films as The Princess and the Pirate (1944) and The Inspector General (1949). Occasionally returning to the stage in the 1950s, Slezak won a Tony award for his portrayal of Cesar in the 1955 musical Fanny, and in 1957 followed in his father's footsteps by singing at the Metropolitan Opera. His TV assignments included the role of the Clock King on Batman (1966-1967). Slezak's 1962 autobiography What Time Is the Next Swan? derived its title from the punch line of an apocryphal story involving his father. At the age of 80, despondent over his many illnesses, Slezak committed suicide in his Beverly Hills home. Walter Slezak was the father of actress Erika Slezak, best known for her continuing role on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live.

Trivia: Although he went on to play a variety of street-wise working-class louts, William Bendix was the son of the conductor of the New York Metropolitan Orchestra. He appeared in one film as a child, then went on to a variety of jobs (including time spent as a minor league baseball player) before joining the New York Theater Guild. His first Broadway appearance was as a cop in William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life (1939); he then began a healthy film career in 1942 with Woman of the Year; the same year, he appeared in Wake Island, for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. With his thick features, broken nose and affected Brooklyn accent, Bendix often played the time-weathered meanie with a heart of gold; eventually he was typecast as dumb and brutish characters. He is best known for his role on the radio show The Life of Riley, which he reprised in the film of the same name (1949) and into a television series in 1953. He played Babe Ruth in The Babe Ruth Story (1948), and generally worked for Paramount.

Trivia: Sixteen-year-old Alabaman Mary Anderson made her first screen appearance as Maybelle Meriweather in Gone With the Wind (1939). As a 20th Century-Fox contractee in the mid-1940s, she was seen in Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1943) and in the lavish biopic Wilson (1944). She ended her film career in 1953, occasionally reemerging on television, notably in the role of Catherine Harrington on the prime-time soaper Peyton Place. Mary Anderson was married to cinematographer Leon Shamroy, whom she met on the set of Wilson. She passed away three days after turning 96, in 2014.

Trivia: Henry Hull, the son of a Louisville drama critic, made his Broadway acting debut in either 1909 or 1911, depending on which "official" biography one reads. After leaving the stage to try his luck as a gold prospector and mining engineer, Hull was back on the boards in 1916, the same year that he made his first film at New Jersey's World Studios. While his place of honor in the American Theater is incontestable (among his many Broadway appearances was Tobacco Road, in which he created the role of Jeeter Lester), Hull's reputation as film actor varies from observer to observer. An incredibly mannered movie performer, Hull was a bit too precious for his leading roles in One Exciting Night (1922) and The Werewolf of London (1935); he also came off as shamelessly hammy in such character parts as the crusading newspaper editor in The Return of Frank James (1940). Conversely, his calculated mannerisms and gratuitous vocal tricks served him quite well in roles like the obnoxious millionaire in Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) and the Ernie Pyle-like war correspondent in Objective Burma (1945). A playwright as well as an actor, Hull worked on such plays as Congratulations and Manhattan. One of Henry Hull's last film appearances was the typically irritating role of a small-town buttinsky in The Chase (1966).

Trivia: The daughter of an Oxford chemistry professor, flowerlike British leading lady Heather Angel was trained at the London Polytechnic of Dramatic Arts. She made her professional debut at age 17, spending several years with the Old Vic. Her first film was the British City of Song (1931). In 1933, she was signed to a Hollywood contract by Fox Studios, appearing in a handful of quality productions like Berkeley Square, but soon becoming a mainstay of "B" pictures. Heather starred in five "Bulldog Drummond" programmers of the 1930s, playing Drummond's girl friend, the eternally left-at-the-altar Phyllis Clavering. Virtually always a brunette on screen, Heather donned a blonde wig to play Cora Munro in Last of the Mohicans (1936), while blonde co-star Binnie Barnes played the raven-haired Alice Munro. During the 1940s, Heather showed up in small parts in several "A" productions; she was the prologue girl in Kitty Foyle (1940), a maid in Suspicion (1941), and the near-comatose woman with the dead baby in Lifeboat (1944) (the latter two films were directed by Alfred Hitchcock). She provided voices for two Disney feature-length cartoons, 1951's Alice in Wonderland (as Alice's sister) and 1953's Peter Pan (as Mrs. Darling). On television, Ms. Angel appeared regularly on the TV series Peyton Place and Family Affair. Heather Angel was married, three times, to actors Ralph Forbes and Henry Wilcoxon, and to director Robert B. Sinclair.

Trivia: Canadian-born actor Hume Cronyn was the son of a well-known Ontario politician. At his father's insistence, young Cronyn studied law at McGill University, but had by then already decided he wanted to be an actor; he made his stage bow with the Montreal Repertory Company at 19, while still a student. After taking classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and working with regional companies in Washington, DC and Virginia, Cronyn made it to Broadway in 1934. His first important role was as the imbibing, jingle-writing hero of Three Men on a Horse, directed and co-written by George Abbott. He remained with Abbott to work in Room Service and Boy Meets Girl - not only establishing himself as a versatile stage actor but also gleaning a lifelong appreciation of strict artistic discipline from the authoritarian Mr. Abbott. Cronyn went from one taskmaster to another when he made his film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. The 32-year-old Cronyn quietly stole several scenes in the film as a fiftyish mystery-novel fanatic. Cronyn would remain beholden to Hitchcock for the rest of his career: He acted in Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) and worked several times thereafter on the director's TV series; he adapted the stage play Rope and the novel Under Capricorn for Hitchcock's filmizations; and he sprang to the late director's defense when a dubious biography of Hitchcock was published in the mid-1980s. Though well-versed in Shakespeare and Moliere on stage, Cronyn was often limited to unpleasant, weasely and sometimes sadistic characters in films; one of his nastiest portrayals was as the Hitleresque prison guard Munsey in Brute Force (1947). A somewhat less hissable Cronyn appeared in The Green Years (1946), wherein he portrayed the father of his real-life wife Jessica Tandy, who was in fact two years older than he. Cronyn had married Tandy in 1942, a union that was to last until the actress' death in 1994. They worked together often on stage (The Fourposter, The Gin Game) and in films (Batteries Not Included), and delighted in giving joint interviews where they'd confound and misdirect the interviewer. Their daughter, Tandy Cronyn, matured into a fine actress in her own right. Seemingly indefatigable despite health problems and the loss of one eye, Cronyn remained gloriously active in films, television and stage into the 1990s, encapsulating many of his experiences in his breezy autobiography A Terrible Liar.

Trivia: Canada Lee, born Leonard Lionel Cornelius Canegate, was one of the greatest African American actors during the late '30s and '40s. Prior to beginning his distinguished acting career playing Banquo in Orson Welles' all-black Macbeth at the WPA's Federal Theater Project in Harlem in 1936, Lee had been a jockey, a violinist, an orchestra leader, and a boxer (during one bout, he lost an eye). He later made an auspicious Broadway debut with his portrayal of Bigger Thomas in Native Son in 1944. That year he also made his feature film debut in Hitchcock's Lifeboat, where he won critical acclaim for his intelligent and authoritative portrayal of the courageous ship's steward. Lee then returned to Broadway. He did not again appear in a film until 1947 in Body and Soul. Two years after he made that socially conscious film, everyone connected with it was blacklisted for allegedly having communist sympathies (this seemed to have been based on Lee's outspoken opinions on African American rights). Not only could Lee no longer appear in films, he was also banned from radio and television. Although he did work again in the anti-apartheid film Cry, the Beloved Country (1951), Lee died of a stroke in 1952 at the age of 45 after publicly protesting the murder of two black men by an ex-police officer in Westchester, New York. Some believe that it was the pressure of the blacklisting coupled with his high-blood pressure that caused Lee's fatal stroke.

Trivia: Alfred Hitchcock was the most well-known director to the general public, by virtue of both his many thrillers and his appearances on television in his own series from the mid-'50s through the early '60s. Probably more than any other filmmaker, his name evokes instant expectations on the part of audiences: at least two or three great chills (and a few more good ones), some striking black comedy, and an eccentric characterization or two in every one of the director's movies.Originally trained at a technical school, Hitchcock gravitated to movies through art courses and advertising, and by the mid-'20s he was making his first films. He had his first major success in 1926 with The Lodger, a thriller loosely based on Jack the Ripper. While he worked in a multitude of genres over the next six years, he found his greatest acceptance working with thrillers. His early work with these, including Blackmail (1929) and Murder (1930), seem primitive by modern standards, but have many of the essential elements of Hitchcock's subsequent successes, even if they are presented in technically rudimentary terms. Hitchcock came to international attention in the mid- to late '30s with The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), and, most notably, The Lady Vanishes (1938). By the end of the 1930s, having gone as far as the British film industry could take him, he signed a contract with David O. Selznick and came to America.From the outset, with the multi-Oscar-winning psychological thriller Rebecca (1940) and the topical anti-Nazi thrillers Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Saboteur (1942), Hitchcock was one of Hollywood's "money" directors whose mere presence on a marquee attracted audiences. Although his relationship with Selznick was stormy, he created several fine and notable features while working for the producer, either directly for Selznick or on loan to RKO and Universal, including Spellbound (1945), probably the most romantic of Hitchcock's movies; Notorious (1946); and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), considered by many to be his most unsettling film.In 1948, after leaving Selznick, Hitchcock went through a fallow period, in which he experimented with new techniques and made his first independent production, Rope; but he found little success. In the early and mid-'50s, he returned to form with the thrillers Strangers on a Train (1951), which was remade in 1987 by Danny DeVito as Throw Momma From the Train; Dial M for Murder (1954), which was among the few successful 3-D movies; and Rear Window (1954). By the mid-'50s, Hitchcock's persona became the basis for the television anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which ran for eight seasons (although he only directed, or even participated as producer, in a mere handful of the shows). His films of the late '50s became more personal and daring, particularly The Trouble With Harry (1955) and Vertigo (1958), in which the dark side of romantic obsession was explored in startling detail. Psycho (1960) was Hitchcock's great shock masterpiece, mostly for its haunting performances by Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins and its shower scene, and The Birds (1963) became the unintended forerunner to an onslaught of films about nature-gone-mad, and all were phenomenally popular -- The Birds, in particular, managed to set a new record for its first network television showing in the mid-'60s.By then, however, Hitchcock's films had slipped seriously at the box office. Both Marnie (1964) and Torn Curtain (1966) suffered from major casting problems, and the script of Torn Curtain was terribly unfocused. The director was also hurt by the sudden departure of composer Bernard Herrmann (who had scored every Hitchcock's movie since 1957) during the making of Torn Curtain, as Herrmann's music had become a key element of the success of Hitchcock's films. Of his final three movies, only Frenzy (1972), which marked his return to British thrillers after 30 years, was successful, although his last film, Family Plot (1976), has achieved some respect from cult audiences. In the early '80s, several years after his death in 1980, Hitchcock's box-office appeal was once again displayed with the re-release of Rope, The Trouble With Harry, his 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo, all of which had been withheld from distribution for several years, but which earned millions of dollars in new theatrical revenues.