Trivia: The daughter of a Massachusetts lawyer, American actress Bette Davis matured with a desire to become an actress upon her graduation from Cushing Academy, but was turned away from Eva LeGallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory in New York. Undaunted, Davis enrolled in John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School, where everyone (including classmate Lucille Ball) regarded her as the star pupil. After a 1928 summer season with director George Cukor's stock company in Rochester, NY (where she worked with future co-star -- and rival -- Miriam Hopkins), Davis went on to Broadway, starring in Broken Dishes and Solid South before Hollywood called. Dazzling on-stage, Davis was signed to a contract by Universal in 1930. After an unimpressive debut in Bad Sister in 1931, however, Davis was out of work, but picked up by Warner Bros. soon thereafter. Davis applied herself with white-hot intensity to becoming a star with that company, and after a major role in the 1932 George Arliss vehicle The Man Who Played God, a star she became. Still, the films at Warner Bros. were uneven, and it wasn't until the studio loaned out Davis to play the bravura role of Mildred in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) that the critics began to take notice. An Oscar nomination seemed inevitable for her performance in Bondage, but Davis was let down by Warner Bros., which didn't like the fact that her best appearance had been in a rival's movie, and it failed to get behind her Oscar campaign (although there was a significant write-in vote for the actress). But, in 1935, Davis excelled as a self-destructive actress in the otherwise turgid film Dangerous, and an Oscar was finally hers. And when Warner Bros. subsequently failed to give Davis the top roles she felt she then merited, the actress went on strike and headed for England. She lost a legal battle with the studio and came back, but it acknowledged her grit and talent by increasing her salary and giving her much better roles. In 1939 alone, Davis starred in Dark Victory, Juarez, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and The Old Maid. But she didn't get the plum role of the season -- Scarlet O'Hara in Gone With the Wind -- because Warner Bros. wouldn't loan her to David O. Selznick unless Errol Flynn was chosen to play Rhett Butler (a piece of casting both Selznick and Davis violently opposed). But Davis had already had her turn at playing a Southern belle in Jezebel (1938), which won her second a Oscar. As her star status increased in the 1940s, Davis found that it would have to be at the expense of her private life -- she would be married and divorced four times, admitting toward the end of her life that her career came first, last, and always. A fling at being her own producer in 1946 was disappointing, and her contract with Warner Bros. petered out in 1949 with a string of unsuccessful films. Davis made a spectacular comeback in 1950 when she replaced an ailing Claudette Colbert in the role of Margot Channing in the Oscar-winning All About Eve. Though suffering from a bone disease that required part of her jaw to be removed, Davis continued to work in films throughout the '50s; but, in 1961, things came to a standstill, forcing the actress to take out a famous job-wanted ad in the trade papers. In 1962, Davis began the next phase of her career when she accepted the role of a whacked-out former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? This led to a string of gothic horror films that did little to advance Davis' reputation, but kept her in the public eye. It was also in 1962 that Davis penned her thoughtful and honest autobiography The Lonely Life. Working in movies, TV, on-stage and on one-woman lecture tours into the '70s, Davis may have been older but no less feisty and combative; her outspokenness may have unnerved some of her co-stars, but made her an ideal interview subject for young film historians and fans. In 1977, Davis received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, an honor usually bestowed upon performers who were retired or inactive. Not Davis. She kept at her craft into the '80s, even after a stroke imposed serious limitations on her speech and movement. Amidst many TV movies and talk-show appearances, Davis gave one last memorable film appearance in The Whales of August (1987), in which she worked with another venerable screen legend, Lillian Gish. Though plagued with illness, Davis was formidable to the end -- so much so that when she died in France at the age of 82, a lot of her fans refused to believe it.

Trivia: Born in Japan to a British patent attorney and his actress wife, Olivia de Havilland succumbed to the lure of Thespis while attending high school in Los Gatos, CA, where she played Hermia in an amateur production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The older sister of actress Joan Fontaine, de Havilland was spotted by famed director Max Reinhardt, who cast her in his legendary Hollywood Bowl production of the play. This led to her part in the Warner Bros. film adaptation of Midsummer in 1935, and being signed to a long-term contract wiht the company. Considering herself a classical actress, de Havilland tried to refuse the traditional ingenue roles offered her by the studio, which countered by telling her she'd be ruined in Hollywood if she didn't cooperate. Loaned out to David O. Selznick, de Havilland played Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind (1939), earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the process. Although she didn't come out on top that year, she would later win two Best Actress Oscars, the first for 1946's To Each His Own, and then again for 1949's The Heiress. De Havilland also made news when she sued Warner Bros. for extending her seven-year contract by tacking on the months she'd been on suspension for refusing to take a part. The actress spent three long years off the screen, but she ultimately won her case, and the "De Havilland Law," as it would become known, effectively destroyed the studios' ability to virtually enslave their contractees by unfairly extending their contract time. After completing The Heiress, de Havilland spent several years on Broadway, cutting down her subsequent film appearances to approximately one per year. In 1955, she moved to France with her second husband, Paris Match editor Pierre Galante; she later recalled her Paris years with the semiautobiographical Every Frenchman Has One. De Havilland showed up in a brace of profitable fading-star horror films in the '60s: Lady in a Cage (1964) and Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965), in which she replaced Joan Crawford. During the next decade, she appeared in a number of TV productions and in such all-star film efforts as Airport '77 (1977) and The Swarm (1978). After a number of TV appearances (if not always starring roles) in the '80s, de Havilland once more found herself in the limelight in 1989, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Gone With the Wind. As one of the only surviving stars from this film, she was much sought after for interviews and reminiscences, but graciously refused almost every request.

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: Born to a well-to-do Southern family, Joseph Cotten studied at the Hickman School of Expression in Washington D.C., and later sought out theater jobs in New York. He made his Broadway debut in 1930, and seven years later joined Orson Welles' progressive Mercury Theatre company, playing leads in such productions as Julius Caesar and Shoemaker's Holiday. He briefly left Welles in 1939 to co-star in Katharine Hepburn's Broadway comeback vehicle The Philadelphia Story. Cotten rejoinedWelles in Hollywood in 1940, making his feature-film debut as Jed Leland in Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). As a sort of private joke, Jed Leland was a dramatic critic, a profession which Cotten himself had briefly pursued on the Miami Herald in the late '20s. Cotten went on to play the kindly auto mogul Eugene Morgan in Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942, and both acted in and co-wrote Journey Into Fear, the film that Welles was working on when he was summarily fired by RKO. Cotten remained a close friend of Welles until the director's death in 1985; he co-starred with Welles in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) and played an unbilled cameo for old times' sake in the Welles-directed Touch of Evil (1958). A firmly established romantic lead by the early '40s, Cotten occasionally stepped outside his established screen image to play murderers (Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt [1943]) and surly drunkards (Under Capricorn [1949]). A longtime contractee of David O. Selznick, Cotten won a Venice Film Festival award for his performance in Selznick's Portrait of Jennie (1948). Cotten's screen career flagged during the 1950s and '60s, though he flourished on television as a guest performer on such anthologies as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Fireside Theatre, The Great Adventure, and as host of The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1955), The Joseph Cotten Show (1956), On Trial (1959), and Hollywood and the Stars (1963). He also appeared in several stage productions, often in the company of his second wife, actress Patricia Medina. In 1987, Cotten published his engagingly candid autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere. He died of pneumonia in 1994 at the age of 88.

Trivia: Jovial, twinkly-eyed character actor Cecil Kellaway resembled a full-grown leprechaun, so it's not surprising that he'd play such a role in the 1948 film Luck of the Irish -- and win an Oscar nomination in the bargain. Before coming to Hollywood to play Mr. Earnshaw in the 1939 filmization of Wuthering Heights, the South African-born Kellaway spent nearly two decades as an actor, writer and director of British and Australian films and stage plays. Even when he played a villainous part like the eternally drunken warlock in I Married a Witch (1942) or an unsympathetic role like the cold-blooded psychiatrist Mr. Chumley in Harvey (1950), it was impossible for Kellaway to be completely dislikable. In 1967, Kellaway won a second Oscar nomination for his performance as the tippling priest in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Cecil Kellaway was the cousin of veteran British actor Edmund Gwenn.

Trivia: While attending San Diego's St. Augustine High School, Victor Buono appeared in three plays a year - including the title role in Hamlet! After planning to attend medical school, Buono was rechannelled into an acting career, spending the summer of his 18th year at the municipal Globe Theatre in San Diego, then studying drama at Villanova University. He made his first network TV appearance at age 21, playing bearded poet "Bongo Benny" in an episode of 77 Sunset Strip; this led to 45 TV guest spots over the next three years, during which Buono would later claim he always played "Standard Bad Man 49-B. Buonogenerally played characters much older than himself, his expressive facial features and excess weight helping him pull off the deception. Robert Aldrich cast Buono as the third-rate songwriter who leeches off of faded child star Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962). Davis' was opposed to the casting, insisting that Buono was "grotesque," but after filming finished the actress went up to Buono and apologized for her earlier attitude; even more gratifying to Buono was his Oscar nomination for Baby Jane. Buono's greatest period of TV activity were the years between 1964 and 1970, when he was much in demand to play villains of various nationalities and ethnic origins on the many secret-agent programs of the period. As bad as Buono's bad guys were, he always played them with a rogueish twinkle in the eye just to let the audience know it was all in fun. His best remembered roles during the late 1960s were Count Manzeppi on the adventure series Wild Wild West, and King Tut on the weekly campfest Batman. Also during this period Buono began going the talk-show route, regaling audiences with his self-deprecating poetry, most of it centered on his avoirdupois ("I think that I shall never see / My feet"). These appearances led to nightclub and lecture dates, a popular comedy record album, and a slim volume of poems, It Could Be Verse. In the 1970s and 1980s, Buono's screen characters began to veer away from outright villainy; now he was most often seen as pompous intellectuals or shifty con men. That he could also play straight, and with compassion, was proven by Buono's appearance as President Taft in the TV miniseries Backstairs at the White House, wherein he delivered a poignant tribute to the late Mrs. Taft. Victor Buono was 43 when he died suddenly at his ranch home in Apple Valley, California.

Trivia: Pressured into an acting career by her ambitious parents, Mary Astor was a silent film star before she was 17 -- a tribute more to her dazzling good looks than anything else. Debuting in The Beggar Maid (1921), Astor appeared opposite John Barrymore in 1923's Beau Brummell with whom she had a romantic relationship and later starred with in Don Juan (1926), Anxious not to be a victim of the talking-picture revolution, the actress perfected her vocal technique in several stage productions for Edward Everett Horton's Los Angeles-based Majestic Theatre, and the result was a most successful talkie career. Things nearly fell to pieces in 1936 when, in the midst of a divorce suit, Astor's ex-husband tried to gain custody of the couple's daughter by making public a diary she had kept. In this volume, Astor detailed her affair with playwright George S. Kaufman; portions of the diary made it to the newspapers, causing despair for Astor and no end of embarrassment for Kaufman. But Astor's then-current employer, producer Sam Goldwyn, stood by his star and permitted her to complete her role in his production of Dodsworth (1936). Goldwyn was touched by Astor's fight for the custody of her child, and was willing to overlook her past mistakes. Some of Astor's best films were made after the scandal subsided, including The Maltese Falcon (1941), in which she played the gloriously untrustworthy Brigid O'Shaughnessy opposite Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade, and The Great Lie (1941), in which she played a supremely truculent concert pianist (and won an Academy Award in the bargain). Seemingly getting better as she got older, Astor spent the final phase of her career playing spiteful or snobbish mothers, with one atypical role as murderer Robert Wagner's slow-on-the-uptake mom in A Kiss Before Dying (1956). A lifelong aspiring writer, Astor wrote two entertaining and insightful books on her career, My Story and A Life on Film. Retiring after the film Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1966), Astor fell victim to health complications and financial tangles, compelling her to spend her last years in a small but comfortable bungalow on the grounds of the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital.

Trivia: Character actor Wesley Addy made his film debut in First Legion (1951). Often cast in cold, intimidating roles, Addy was a member in good standing of director Robert Aldrich's informal stock company. The actor was given plenty of elbow room in his supporting parts in Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and The Big Knife (1955), and had a memorable pre-credits bit as a migraine-prone movie producer ("Boy oh boy oh boy oh boy") in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Addy married actress Celeste Holm in 1961.

Trivia: Bruce MacLeish Dern is the scion of a distinguished family of politicians and men of letters that includes his uncle, the distinguished poet/playwright Archibald MacLeish. After a prestigious education at New Trier High and Choate Preparatory, Dern enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, only to drop out abruptly in favor of Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio. With his phlegmatic voice and schoolyard-bully countenance, he was not considered a likely candidate for stardom, and was often treated derisively by his fellow students. In 1958, he made his first Broadway appearance in A Touch of the Poet. Two years later, he was hired by director Elia Kazan to play a bit role in the 20th Century Fox production Wild River. He was a bit more prominent on TV, appearing regularly as E.J. Stocker in the contemporary Western series Stoney Burke. A favorite of Alfred Hitchcock, Dern was prominently cast in a handful of the director's TV-anthology episodes, and as the unfortunate sailor in the flashback sequences of the feature film Marnie (1964). During this period, Dern played as many victims as victimizers; he was just as memorable being hacked to death by Victor Buono in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965) as he was while attempting to rape Linda Evans on TV's The Big Valley. Through the auspices of his close friend Jack Nicholson, Dern showed up in several Roger Corman productions of the mid-'60s, reaching a high point as Peter Fonda's "guide" through LSD-land in The Trip (1967). The actor's ever-increasing fan following amongst disenfranchised younger filmgoers shot up dramatically when he gunned down Establishment icon John Wayne in The Cowboys (1971). After scoring a critical hit with his supporting part in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Dern began attaining leading roles in such films as Silent Running (1971), The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), and Smile (1975). In 1976, he returned to the Hitchcock fold, this time with top billing, in Family Plot. Previously honored with a National Society of Film Critics award for his work in the Jack Nicholson-directed Drive, He Said (1970), Dern received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of an unhinged Vietnam veteran in Coming Home (1978), in which he co-starred with one-time Actors' Studio colleague (and former classroom tormentor) Jane Fonda. He followed this triumph with a return to Broadway in the 1979 production Strangers. In 1982, Dern won the Berlin Film Festival Best Actor prize for That Championship Season. He then devoted several years to stage and TV work, returning to features in the strenuous role of a middle-aged long distance runner in On the Edge (1986).After a humorous turn in the 1989 Tom Hanks comedy The 'Burbs, Dern dropped beneath the radar for much of the '90s. He would appear in cult favorites like Mulholland Falls and the Walter Hill Yojimbo re-make Last Man Standing (both 1996), as well as The Haunting (1999) and All the Pretty Horses (2000). As the 2000's unfolded, Dern would continue to act, apperaing most notably in film like Monster and Django Unchained.Formerly married to actress Diane Ladd, Bruce Dern is the father of actress Laura Dern.

Trivia: Busy character actor Frank Ferguson was able to parlay his pinched facial features, his fussy little moustache, and his bellows-like voice for a vast array of characterizations. Ferguson was equally effective as a hen-pecked husband, stern military leader, irascible neighbor, merciless employer, crooked sheriff, and barbershop hanger-on. He made his inaugural film appearance in Father is a Prince (1940) and was last seen on the big screen in The Great Sioux Massacre (1965). Ferguson proved himself an above-average actor by successfully pulling off the treacly scene in The Babe Ruth Story (1948) in which Babe (William Bendix) says "Hi, kid" to Ferguson's crippled son--whereupon the boy suddenly stands up and walks! Among Franklin Ferguson's hundreds of TV appearances were regular stints on the children's series My Friend Flicka (1956) and the nighttime soap opera Peyton Place (1964-68).

Trivia: Born into a show business family, George Kennedy made his stage debut at the age of two in a touring company of Bringing up Father. By the time he was seven, he was spinning records on a New York radio station. Kennedy' showbusiness inclinations were put aside when he developed a taste for the rigors of military life during World War II, and he wound up spending 16 years in the army. His military career ended and his acting career began when a back injury in the late 1950s inspired him to seek out another line of work.Appropriately enough, given his background, Kennedy first made his name with a role as a military advisor on the Sergeant Bilko TV series. In films from 1961, the burly, 6'4" actor usually played heavies, both figuratively and literally; quite often, as in Charade (1963) and Straitjacket (1964), his unsavory screen characters were bumped off sometime during the fourth reel. One of his friendlier roles was as a compassionate Union officer in Shenandoah (1965), an assignment he was to treasure because it gave him a chance to work with the one of his idols, Jimmy Stewart.Kennedy moved up to the big leagues with his Academy Award win for his portrayal of Dragline in Cool Hand Luke (1967). An above-the-title star from then on, Kennedy has been associated with many a box-office hit, notably all four Airport films. Unlike many major actors, he has displayed a willingness to spoof his established screen image, as demonstrated by his portrayal of Ed Hocken in the popular Naked Gun series. On TV, Kennedy has starred in the weekly series Sarge (1971) and The Blue Knight (1978), and was seen as President Warren G. Harding in the 1979 miniseries Backstairs at the White House. During the mid '90s, he became known as a persuasive commercial spokesman in a series of breath-freshener advertisements. In 1997, he provided the voice for L.B. Mammoth in the animated musical Cats Don't Dance, and the following year again displayed his vocal talents as one of the titular toys-gone-bad in Small Soldiers. Kennedy continued to steadily work through the next two decades; his final role was in The Gambler in 2014. He died in 2016, at age 91.

Trivia: A former child actor, John Megna is perhaps best remembered for playing Dill, the neighbor of young Scout, in both the Broadway and film versions of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). His second best-known film appearance is in the Bette Davis/Olivia de Havilland psycho-horror classic Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Megna continued to have a sporadic film career through 1981.

Trivia: The son of actors, Percy Helton began his own career at age two in a Tony Pastor revue in which his parents were performing. The undersized Helton was a valuable juvenile player for producer David Belasco, making his film debut in a 1915 Belasco production, The Fairy and the Waif. Helton matured into adult roles under the stern guidance of George M. Cohan. After serving in the Army during World War I, Helton established himself on Broadway, appearing in such productions as Young America, One Sunday Afternoon and The Fabulous Invalid. He made his talkie debut in 1947's Miracle on 34th Street, playing the inebriated Macy's Santa Claus whom Edmund Gwenn replaces. Perhaps the quintessential "who is that?" actor, Helton popped up, often uncredited, in over one hundred succinct screen characterizations. Forever hunched over and eternally short of breath, he played many an obnoxious clerk, nosey mailman, irascible bartender, officious train conductor and tremulous stool pigeon. His credits include Fancy Pants (1950), The Robe (1953), White Christmas (1954), Rally Round the Flag Boys (1959), The Music Man (1962) and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1965), as well as two appearances as sweetshop proprietor Mike Clancy in the Bowery Boys series. Thanks to his trademarked squeaky voice, and because he showed up in so many "cult" films (Wicked Woman, Kiss Me Deadly, Sons of Katie Elder), Helton became something of a high-camp icon in his last years. In this vein, Percy Helton was cast as the "Heraldic Messenger" in the bizarre Monkees vehicle Head (he showed up at the Monkees' doorstep with a beautiful blonde manacled to his wrist!), the treacherous Sweetieface in the satirical western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and the bedraggled bank clerk Cratchit on the TV series The Beverly Hillbillies.

Trivia: By the time she first appeared as Grandma Walton in 1971, American actress Ellen Corby had been playing elderly characters for nearly thirty years--and she herself was still only in her fifties. The daughter of Danish immigrants, Ellen Hansen was born in Wisconsin and raised in Philadelphia; she moved to Hollywood in 1933 after winning several amateur talent shows. Her starring career consisted of tiny parts in low-budget Poverty Row quickies; to make a living, Ellen became a script girl (the production person responsible for maintaining a film's continuity for the benefit of the film editor), working first at RKO and then at Hal Roach studios, where she met and married cameraman Francis Corby. The marriage didn't last, though Ellen retained the last name of Corby professionally. While still a script girl, Ellen began studying at the Actors Lab, then in 1944 decided to return to acting full time. She played several movie bit roles, mostly as servants, neurotics, and busybodies, before earning an Oscar nomination for the role of Trina the maid in I Remember Mama (1948). Her career fluctuated between bits and supporting parts until 1971, when she was cast as Grandma Walton in the CBS movie special The Homecoming. This one-shot evolved into the dramatic series The Waltons in 1972, with Ms. Corby continuing as Grandma. The role earned Ellen a "Best Supporting Actress" Emmy award in 1973, and she remained with the series until suffering a debilitating stroke in 1976. After a year's recuperation, Ellen returned to The Waltons, valiantly carrying on until the series' 1980 cancellation, despite the severe speech and movement restrictions imposed by her illness. Happily, Ellen Corby endured, and was back as Grandma in the Waltons reunion special of the early '90s.

Trivia: African-American actress Lillian Randolph is best remembered for starring in the radio series "Beulah." On radio, she also worked in "Amos 'n' Andy" and "The Great Gildersleeve." In film, Randolph played character roles in many films including those in the Great Gildersleeve series of the '40s.

Trivia: In recalling his courtroom scene in To Kill a Mockingbird, Gregory Peck recalled the vital contribution of African American actor Bill Walker, who was cast as the Reverend Sikes. "All the black people in the balcony stood," Peck noted. "My two kids didn't. When Bill said to them 'Stand up, children, your father is passing,' he wrapped up the Academy Award for me." The son of a freed slave, Walker began his stage career at a time when black actors were largely confined to shuffling, eye-rolling "Yowzah boss" bit parts. While the harsh economic realities of show business dictated that Walker would occasionally have to take less than prestigious roles as butlers, cooks, valets, and African tribal chieftains, he lobbied long and hard to assure that other actors of his race would be permitted to portray characters with more than a modicum of dignity. He also was a tireless worker in the field of Civil Rights, frequently laying both his career and his life on the line. Walker's Broadway credits included Harlem, The Solid South and Golden Dawn; his film credits were legion. Bill Walker was married to actress Peggy Cartwright, who as a child was one of the stars of the Our Gang silent comedies.