Trivia: The son of an Oklahoma carpet layer, James Garner did stints in the Army and merchant marines before working as a model. His professional acting career began with a non-speaking part in the Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (1954), in which he was also assigned to run lines with stars Lloyd Nolan, Henry Fonda, and John Hodiak. Given that talent roster, and the fact that the director was Charles Laughton, Garner managed to earn his salary and receive a crash course in acting at the same time. After a few television commercials, he was signed as a contract player by Warner Bros. in 1956. He barely had a part in his first film, The Girl He Left Behind (1956), though he was given special attention by director David Butler, who felt Garner had far more potential than the film's nominal star, Tab Hunter. Due in part to Butler's enthusiasm, Garner was cast in the Warner Bros. TV Western Maverick. The scriptwriters latched on to his gift for understated humor, and, before long, the show had as many laughs as shoot-outs. Garner was promoted to starring film roles during his Maverick run, but, by the third season, he chafed at his low salary and insisted on better treatment. The studio refused, so he walked out. Lawsuits and recriminations were exchanged, but the end result was that Garner was a free agent as of 1960. He did quite well as a freelance actor for several years, turning in commendable work in such films as Boys' Night Out (1962) and The Great Escape (1963), but was soon perceived by filmmakers as something of a less-expensive Rock Hudson, never more so than when he played Hudson-type parts opposite Doris Day in Move Over, Darling and The Thrill of It All! (both 1963).Garner fared rather better in variations of his Maverick persona in such Westerns as Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) and The Skin Game (1971), but he eventually tired of eating warmed-over stew; besides, being a cowboy star had made him a walking mass of injuries and broken bones. He tried to play a more peaceable Westerner in the TV series Nichols (1971), but when audiences failed to respond, his character was killed off and replaced by his more athletic twin brother (also Garner). The actor finally shed the Maverick cloak with his long-running TV series The Rockford Files (1974-1978), in which he played a John MacDonald-esque private eye who never seemed to meet anyone capable of telling the truth. Rockford resulted in even more injuries for the increasingly battered actor, and soon he was showing up on TV talk shows telling the world about the many physical activities which he could no longer perform. Rockford ended in a spirit of recrimination, when Garner, expecting a percentage of the profits, learned that "creative bookkeeping" had resulted in the series posting none. To the public, Garner was the rough-hewn but basically affable fellow they'd seen in his fictional roles and as Mariette Hartley's partner (not husband) in a series of Polaroid commercials. However, his later film and TV-movie roles had a dark edge to them, notably his likable but mercurial pharmacist in Murphy's Romance (1985), for which he received an Oscar nomination, and his multifaceted co-starring stints with James Woods in the TV movies Promise (1986) and My Name Is Bill W. (1989). In 1994, Garner came full circle in the profitable feature film Maverick (1994), in which the title role was played by Mel Gibson. With the exception of such lower-key efforts as the noir-ish Twilight (1998) and the made-for-TV thriller Dead Silence (1997), Garner's career in the '90s found the veteran actor once again tapping into his latent ability to provoke laughs in such efforts as Space Cowboys (2000) while maintaining a successful small-screen career by returning to the role of Jim Rockford in several made-for-TV movies. He provided a voice for the popular animatedfeature Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and appeared in the comedy-drama The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002). Garner enjoyed a career resurgance in 2003, when he joined the cast of TV's 8 Simple Rules, acting as a sort of replacement for John Ritter, who had passed away at the beginning of the show's second season. He next appeared in The Notebook (2004), which earned Garner a Screen Actors Guild nomination and also poised him to win the Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award. His last on-screen role was a small supporting role in The Ultimate Gift (2007). In 2008, Garner suffered a stroke and retired acting. He died in 2014, at age 86.

Trivia: Born November 6, 1946, in Pasadena, CA, actress Sally Field was the daughter of another actress, Margaret Field, who is perhaps best known to film buffs as the leading lady of the sci-fi The Man From Planet X (1951). Field's stepfather was actor/stunt man Jock Mahoney, who, despite a certain degree of alienation between himself and his stepdaughter, was the principal influence in her pursuit of an acting career. Active in high-school dramatics, Field bypassed college to enroll in a summer acting workshop at Columbia studios. Her energy and determination enabled her to win, over hundreds of other aspiring actresses, the coveted starring role on the 1965 TV series Gidget. Gidget lasted only one season, but Field had become popular with teen fans and in 1967 was given a second crack at a sitcom with The Flying Nun; this one lasted three seasons and is still flying around in reruns.Somewhere along the way Field made her film debut in The Way West (1967) but was more or less ignored by moviegoers over the age of 21. Juggling sporadic work on stage and TV with a well-publicized first marriage (she was pregnant during Flying Nun's last season), Field set about shedding her "perky" image in order to get more substantial parts. Good as she was as a reformed junkie in the 1970 TV movie Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring, by 1972 Field was mired again in sitcom hell with the short-lived weekly The Girl With Something Extra. Freshly divorced and with a new agent, she tried to radically alter her persona with a nude scene in the 1975 film Stay Hungry, resulting in little more than embarrassment for all concerned. Finally, in 1976, Field proved her mettle as an actress in the TV movie Sybil, winning an Emmy for her virtuoso performance as a woman suffering from multiple personalities stemming from childhood abuse. Following this triumph, Field entered into a long romance with Burt Reynolds, working with the actor in numerous films that were short on prestige but long on box-office appeal.By 1979, Field found herself in another career crisis: now she had to jettison the "Burt Reynolds' girlfriend" image. She did so with her powerful portrayal of a small-town union organizer in Norma Rae (1979), for which she earned her first Academy Award. At last taken completely seriously by fans and industry figures, Field spent the next four years in films of fluctuating merit (she also ended her relationship with Reynolds and married again), rounding out 1984 with her second Oscar for Places in the Heart. It was at the 1985 Academy Awards ceremony that Field earned a permanent place in the lexicon of comedy writers, talk show hosts, and impressionists everywhere by reacting to her Oscar with a tearful "You LIKE me! You REALLY LIKE me!" Few liked her in such subsequent missteps as Surrender (1987) and Soapdish (1991), but Field was able to intersperse them with winners such as the 1989 weepie Steel Magnolias and the Robin Williams drag extravaganza Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). Field found further triumph as the doggedly determined mother of Tom Hanks in the 1994 box-office bonanza Forrest Gump, which, in addition to mining box-office gold, also managed to pull in a host of Oscars and various other awards.Following Gump, Field turned her energies to ultimately less successful projects, such as 1995's Eye for an Eye with Kiefer Sutherland and Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco (1996). She also did some TV work, most notably in Tom Hanks' acclaimed From the Earth to the Moon miniseries (1998) and the American Film Institute's 100 Years....100 Movies series. The turn of the century found Field contributing her talents to a pair of down-home comedy-dramas, first with a cameo matriarch role in 2000's Where the Heart Is and later that year as director of the Minnie Driver vehicle Beautiful. Both films met with near-universal derision from critics; only the Steel Magnolias-esque Heart found a modest box-office following.In 2003, Field took a role alongside Reese Witherspoon in the legal comedy Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, & Bllonde, and in 2006 joined the cast of ABC's Brothers & Sisters in the role of matriach Nora Walker. The role earned her an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2007. The actress was cast in the role of Aunt May for The Amazing Spiderman (2012), and was so revered as Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln that she earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Trivia: An actor since the age of ten, Canadian Corey Haim is one of the few juvenile performers to thrive in wacky comedy roles. He started out with relatively straight parts in films like Lucas (1986), in which he effectively played one of filmdom's rare three-dimensional "nerds." But in laughgetters like License to Drive (1988) and Dream Machine (1991), Haim has demonstrated comic skills above and beyond those of the films' comparatively unimaginative screenwriters. He was also a regular on the TV sitcom Roomies (1987), where once again he was markedly better than his material. His recent appearances in theatrical bombs and direct-to-video potboilers have somewhat diminished Haim's industry clout but have not slowed him down. Haim is frequently co-starred (and frequently confused) with his contemporary namesake Corey Feldman.

Trivia: Chicago-born actor Brian Kerwin's film appearances have been more plentiful on the small screen than on the large. Kerwin has been costarred on such TV movies as Bluegrass (1983), A Real American Hero (1978), The Challenger (1990) (as doomed astronaut Capt. Michael Smith) and Against Her Will: An Incident in Baltimore (1992). He also had regular roles on the TV series The Chisholms (1979), and on Lobo (1980), playing the handsomer of Sheriff Claude Akins' two deputies. In addition, Brian Kerwin played Michelle Pfeiffer's married lover in the 1987 PBS adaptation of John O'Hara's Natica Jackson.

Trivia: Supporting actor Dennis Burkley has been onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: Intelligent, attractive, low-profile leading lady Georgann Johnson's first major role was as Marge Weskit, wife of wise-guy high-school teacher Harvey Weskit (Tony Randall) in the popular early-TV sitcom Mr. Peepers. For her film debut, she played the lead in James Cagney's only directorial effort, A Short Cut to Hell (1958). By the 1960s, Johnson was firmly established as a dependable second lead and character actress. The sizes of her screen and TV roles have fluctuated from meaty to miniscule: for example, while she is afforded generous screen time as James Garner's small-town lady friend in Murphy's Romance (1985), her supporting role as Martin Ritt's wife in The Slugger's Wife (1988) is dispensed within a single longshot. On TV, she was featured as Dr. Waverly in The Colbys (1984), Katherine McCay in Our Family Honor (1986), and star Sharon Gless' mother in The Trials of Rosie O'Neill (1990). Georgann Johnson is the widow of writer/director Stanley Prager, and the mother of actress Sally Prager.

Trivia: Most of character actress Dortha Duckworth's nearly 60-year-long career was spent on Broadway in productions such as Goodbye Again, Pippin, and Arsenic and Old Lace. A native of Newton, KS, she moved to New York to study acting in the 1920s. She took her first Broadway bow in 1932. As a much older woman, Duckworth began appearing in television commercials and in the occasional feature film beginning with The Honeymoon Killers (1969) and ending with Stanley and Iris (1990). Duckworth passed away in a Camp Hill, PA, at the age of 91.

Trivia: Hatchet-faced character actor Charles Lane has been one of the most instantly recognizable non-stars in Hollywood for more than half a century. Lane has been a familiar figure in movies (and, subsequently, on television) for 60 years, portraying crotchety, usually miserly, bad-tempered bankers and bureaucrats. Lane was born Charles Levison in San Francisco in 1899 (some sources give his year of birth as 1905). He learned the ropes of acting at the Pasadena Playhouse during the middle/late '20s, appearing in the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Noel Coward before going to Hollywood in 1930, just as sound was fully taking hold. He was a good choice for character roles, usually playing annoying types with his high-pitched voice and fidgety persona, encompassing everything from skinflint accountants to sly, fast-talking confidence men -- think of an abrasive version of Bud Abbott. His major early roles included the stage manager Max Jacobs in Twentieth Century and the tax assessor in You Can't Take It With You. One of the busier character men in Hollywood, Lane was a particular favorite of Frank Capra's, and he appeared in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace, It's a Wonderful Life -- with a particularly important supporting part in the latter -- and State of the Union. He played in every kind of movie from screwball comedy like Ball of Fire to primordial film noir, such as I Wake Up Screaming. As Lane grew older, he tended toward more outrageously miserly parts, in movies and then on television, where he turned up Burns & Allen, I Love Lucy, and Dear Phoebe, among other series. Having successfully played a tight-fisted business manager hired by Ricky Ricardo to keep Lucy's spending in line in one episode of I Love Lucy (and, later, the U.S. border guard who nearly arrests the whole Ricardo clan and actor Charles Boyer at the Mexican border in an episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour), Lane was a natural choice to play Lucille Ball's nemesis on The Lucy Show. Her first choice for the money-grubbing banker would have been Gale Gordon, but as he was already contractually committed to the series Dennis the Menace, she hired Lane to play Mr. Barnsdahl, the tight-fisted administrator of her late-husband's estate during the first season of the show. Lane left the series after Gordon became available to play the part of Mr. Mooney, but in short order he moved right into the part that came very close to making him a star. The CBS country comedy series Petticoat Junction needed a semi-regular villain and Lane just fit the bill as Homer Bedloe, the greedy, bad-tempered railroad executive whose career goal was to shut down the Cannonball railroad that served the town of Hooterville. He became so well-known in the role, which he only played once or twice a season, that at one point Lane found himself in demand for personal appearance tours. In later years, he also turned up in roles on The Beverly Hillbillies, playing Jane Hathaway's unscrupulous landlord, and did an excruciatingly funny appearance on The Odd Couple in the mid-'70s, playing a manic, greedy patron at the apartment sale being run by Felix and Oscar. Lane also did his share of straight dramatic roles, portraying such parts as Tony Randall's nastily officious IRS boss in the comedy The Mating Game (1959), the crusty River City town constable in The Music Man (1962) (which put Lane into the middle of a huge musical production number), the wryly cynical, impatient judge in the James Garner comedy film The Wheeler-Dealers (1963), and portraying Admiral William Standley in The Winds of War (1983), based on Herman Wouk's novel. He was still working right up until the late '80s, and David Letterman booked the actor to appear on his NBC late-night show during the middle of that decade, though his appearance on the program was somewhat disappointing and sad; the actor, who was instantly recognized by the studio audience, was then in his early nineties and had apparently not done live television in many years (if ever), and apparently hadn't been adequately prepped. He seemed confused and unable to say much about his work, which was understandable -- the nature of his character parts involved hundreds of roles that were usually each completed in a matter or two or three days shooting, across almost 60 years. Lane died at 102, in July 2007 - about 20 years after his last major film appearance.

Trivia: American actor John C. Becher began his professional career in the military during WW II where he was assigned to teach actors how to survive USO performances in combat zones. Among his students were Melvyn Douglas and Red Skelton. Prior to that, Becher trained at Milwaukee State Teachers College and at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. Following his military stint, he began appearing in New York theaters. This led him to act on television and finally in films.

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: Started playing the piano at the age of 4. Formed first vocal quartet, the Co-Sines, while still in high school. Met future husband Gerry Goffin while attending Queens College; they formed a songwriting partnership and churned out more than 400 songs that have been recorded by more than 1000 artists. Scored her first Top 10 hit in 1961, titled "It Might As Well Rain Until September," a tune cowritten with Goffin. Released first album in 1970, titled Writer. Her 1971 album Tapestry spawned several hits, including "I Feel the Earth Move," "So Far Away" and her own version of "You've Got a Friend." In 1983, took a break from recording, moved to Idaho, and became an environmental activist; she returned to music six years later with City Streets. Appeared in a 1988 off-Broadway production of A Minor Incident. With Goffin, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. Released her first-ever holiday album, A Holiday Carole, in November 2011. Published her memoir, A Natural Woman, in April 2012, and it made the New York Times best-sellers list. Is an advocate and cofounder of the White Cloud Council, an environmental conservation group.

Trivia: Character actor Ted Gehring first appeared onscreen in the late '60s.

Trivia: Screenwriter Irving Ravetch penned screenplays for a number of films during the '50s, '60s, and '70s. He frequently worked with his wife and fellow screenwriter Harriet Frank Jr.. Together they wrote, and received Oscar nominations for, Hud (1963) and Norma Rae (1969). Ravetch also worked as a producer.

Trivia: American film director Martin Ritt started out as a Broadway actor. Ritt's stage role as "Gleason" in Winged Victory brought him to Hollywood for the film version, for which the studio publicity billed him, along with the rest of the male cast, by the rank he held in the Army (Private First Class Martin Ritt). A victim of the Hollywood blacklist, Ritt's career came to a standstill in the early 1950s. He reemerged, not as an actor, but as a director for the 1956 film Edge of the City. A favorite of actor Paul Newman, Ritt directed Newman in The Long Hot Summer (1958), Paris Blues (1961), Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962), Hud (1963), The Outrage (1964) and Hombre (1967). Other Ritt-directed films of note were Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), Cross Creek (1984), Murphy's Romance (1985), and, his last film, Stanley and Iris (1990). If there doesn't seem to be a central throughline in these films it was because Ritt steadfastly refused to be typecast as a director. One project that brought him immense satisfaction was The Front (1976), a comedy-drama of the blacklist years in which Ritt worked with fellow blacklistees Martin Balsam, Zero Mostel, Joshua Shelley, Herschel Bernardi, Lloyd Gough, and screenwriter Walter Bernstein. In 1985, Ritt made a surprising but delightful return to acting in the role of an excitable baseball manager in the otherwise disposable The Slugger's Wife (1985).

Trivia: Trained at HB Studio, rough-edged American actor Ray Sharkey quickly graduated to movies and television. Sharkey's first film was The Lords of Flatbush (1974), a street-gang drama that also featured early appearances by Henry Winkler and Sylvester Stallone. The actor's breakthrough film was 1980's The Idolmaker, in which he played rock 'n' roll entrepreneur Bob Marcucci; that same year, he was Phil in the low-budget but highly praised Willie and Phil. Sharkey's best known role was as Atlantic City gangster Sonny Steelgrave on the TV series "Wiseguy" (1987-90). Shortly after finishing work on the 1992 Burt Reynolds vehicle Cop and A Half, Sharkey made public the fact that he had contracted AIDS through indiscriminate drug use; he died less than one year later.