Trivia: The son of a hotelier, Dan Dailey began taking dancing lessons at the age of 14. He worked in minstrel shows, vaudeville and burlesque, taking many "joe jobs" during fallow periods. Graduating to Broadway, Dailey was featured in Babes in Arms, Stars in Your Eyes and I Married an Angel. He came to Hollywood in 1940 when he was signed as an MGM contract player. After serving as an officer in World War II, Dailey rose to film stardom in such 20th Century-Fox productions as Mother Wore Tights (1947), A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950) and When My Baby Smiles at Me (1948), for which he won an Oscar nomination. Other top-rank Dan Dailey musical performances can be seen in Universal's Meet Me at the Fair (1952) and MGM's It's Always Fair Weather (1953). The actor's athletic physique and remarkable dexterity won him leading roles in two baseball films, Pride of St Louis (1953) (in which he played Dizzy Dean) and The Kid From Left Field (1953). On television, Dailey starred in three series: Four Just Men (1959), The Governor and JJ (1970), and Farraday and Company (1974). In 1977, Dan Dailey broke his hip while appearing in a touring production of The Odd Couple; he died of acute anemia one year later.

Trivia: A dark-haired, earthy beauty and a versatile actress, Anne Bancroft has actually had two film careers. The first, which took place during the 1950s, was generally undistinguished and featured her in films that usually failed to fully utilize her talents. The second, which began in the early '60s, established her as an actress of great acclaim in films like The Miracle Worker and granted her screen immortality with roles such as that of the iconic Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. A first generation Italian-American hailing from the Bronx, Bancroft (born Anna Maria Louisa Italiano) was four years old when she began taking acting and dancing lessons. Billing herself as Anne Marno, she began appearing on television in 1950. Two years later she signed a contract with Fox and launched a six-year career in second-string Westerns and crime dramas that began with Don't Bother to Knock in 1952. By 1958, Bancroft had enough of Hollywood and turned her attentions to Broadway, where she spent the next five years. She proved her mettle as a serious dramatic actress by winning a Tony for Two for the Seesaw in 1958. Two years later, she won her second Tony and a New York Drama Critics Award for her portrayal of Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker. Armed with these triumphs, Bancroft returned to Hollywood to appear in the movie version of The Miracle Worker (1962), reprising her role opposite Patty Duke who played Helen Keller. Her performance earned her an Oscar for Best Actress; unable to attend the ceremony because she was performing on Broadway in Mother Courage, she was presented with the award by Joan Crawford a week later on the Broadway stage. Bancroft followed this victory with a string of emotional dramas that included The Pumpkin Eater, which was released in 1964, the same year she married filmmaker/comedian Mel Brooks. Just when it would look like she would be typecast in such dramas, Bancroft showed up in Mike Nichols' seminal comedy The Graduate, playing Mrs. Robinson, the ultimate "older woman," to Dustin Hoffman's confused Benjamin Braddock. Her role in the landmark film won her an Oscar nomination, to say nothing of a permanent dose of notoriety. Although Bancroft seemed destined for a stellar career and she remained one of the more well-respected actresses in Hollywood, a long string of so-so films kept her from reaching major stardom. Still, Bancroft turned in a number of memorable performances in films such as The Turning Point (1977), The Elephant Man (1980), To Be or Not to Be (her 1983 collaboration with husband Brooks), Agnes of God (1985), 84 Charing Cross Road (1986), and Torch Song Trilogy (1988). In 1980, Bancroft made her debut as a director/screenwriter in the darkly comic Dom DeLuise vehicle Fatso. Throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium, Bancroft continued to be visible onscreen, appearing in films like How to Make an American Quilt (1995), Home for the Holidays (1995), and Keeping the Faith (2000). Sadly, she became stricken with uterine cancer and succumbed to the disease in 2005. Her last performance would come postumously with a voice-role in the animated adventure Delgo.

Trivia: Working from the ground up in stock companies, Lloyd Bridges was a member of the progressive Actors Lab company in the mid 1930s. He made his Broadway debut toward the end of that decade in a production of Othello. Signed by Columbia in 1941, Bridges appeared in everything the studio assigned him, from Three Stooges 2-reel comedies to such "A" pictures as Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Talk of the Town (1942), and Sahara (1943). He began freelancing in 1945, accepting the prescient role of a deep-sea diver in 1948's 16 Fathoms Deep, among other films. The most memorable of his '50s assignments was the leading role in the cult science-fiction programmer Rocketship X-M (1950) and the part of the look-out-for-number-one deputy in High Noon (1952).Thanks to his earlier involvement in the Actors Lab and his admission at the HUAC hearings that he'd once flirted with communism, Bridges was "graylisted" during the mid-'50s, able to find work only in lesser pictures and TV shows. He was rescued by producer Ivan Tors, who cast Bridges as diver-for-hire Mike Nelson in the TV series Sea Hunt. Filmed between 1957 and 1961, Sea Hunt was the most popular syndicated program of the era, turning Bridges into a millionaire. Alas, neither of his subsequent series of the '60s, The Lloyd Bridges Show (1962) and The Loner (1965), survived their first seasons. Undaunted, Bridges continued working into the '90s, displaying a hitherto untapped flair for zany comedy in such films as Airplane! (1980), Joe vs. the Volcano (1990), and the two Hot Shots films. Bridges was the father of actors Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges. A committed environmentalist, he was involved in several organizations including the American Oceans Campaign and Heal the Bay, a Los Angeles-based group. Bridges died of natural causes on March 10, 1998. Shortly before his passing, he had completed work on two films, Jane Austen's Mafia and Meeting Daddy; in the latter film, Bridges co-starred with his eldest son Beau.

Trivia: A descendant of one of California's pioneer families, American actor Ray Collins' interest in the theatre came naturally. His father was drama critic of the Sacramento Bee. Taking to the stage at age 14, Collins moved to British Columbia, where he briefly headed his own stock company, then went on to Broadway. An established theatre and radio performer by the mid-1930s, Collins began a rewarding association with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. He played the "world's last living radio announcer" in Welles' legendary War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938, then moved to Hollywood with the Mercury troupe in 1939. Collins made his film debut as Boss Jim Gettys in Welles' film classic Citizen Kane (1940). After the Mercury disbanded in the early 1940s, Collins kept busy as a film and stage character actor, usually playing gruff business executives. Collins is most fondly remembered by TV fans of the mid-1950s for his continuing role as the intrepid Lt. Tragg on the weekly series Perry Mason.

Trivia: A holder of a BA degree from the University of San Francisco, Richard Egan was an Army judo instructor during WorldWar II. While working towards his MA in theatre at Stanford University, the rugged Egan was discovered by a Warner Bros. talent scout. After his apprenticeship in supporting roles, Egan was signed as a leading man by 20th Century-Fox, where he was touted as "another Gable." Most comfortable in brawling adventure films, Egan proved a capable dramatic actor in such films as A View from Pompey's Head (1955). Many of his starring appearances in the 1960s were in such esoterica as Esther and the King (1960) and The 300 Spartans (1962) and in foreign-filmed westerns. In 1962, Egan starred as Jim Redigo, foreman of a sprawling New Mexico ranch, in the contemporary western TV series Empire; for its second season, the series was shortened from one hour to thirty minutes per week, and retitled Redigo. During his last decade, Richard Egan was a prolific dinner-theatre star throughout the U.S., and also appeared as Samuel Clegg II on the TV daytime drama Capitol.

Trivia: Iowa-born Bob Hopkins started out in show business in the early '40s with a mimickry act in which his most successful impersonation was that of Bing Crosby. He turned to acting in the mid-'40s and played in every kind of movie, from brutal crime pictures like Underworld U.S.A. to costume programmers such as Son of Sinbad (portraying a slave auctioneer) over the next 15 years. Outgoing, glib-tongued, and with a ready wit, he seemed at his best portraying roles out of his own stage background, especially hosts and masters-of-ceremony, in movies such as I'll Cry Tomorrow and the late-era Bowery Boys feature Crashing Las Vegas. He also did his share of television work, in straight acting roles on The Twilight Zone and Wagon Train, but his most memorable work may have been in one excruciatingly funny episode of The Abbott & Costello Show, as a character named "Bob Hopkins," the sarcastic host of a vicious parody of Beat the Clock called "Hold That Cuckoo." Hopkins was also a songwriter, credited with the compositions "Flight to Hong Kong" and "Angel's Kiss." He died of acute leukemia shortly after completing his work in the movie Papa's Delicate Condition.

Trivia: Born in Colorado and raised in Oregon, actor Walter Sande was a music student from age six. He dropped out of college to organize his own band, then for many years served as musical director for the West Coast Fox Theater chain. In 1937, Sande entered films with a small role in Goldwyn Follies (1938). He fluctuated thereafter between bits in films like Citizen Kane (1941), in which he played one of the many reporters, and supporting roles in films like To Have and Have Not (1944), in which he portrayed the defaulting customer who is punched out by a boat-renting Humphrey Bogart. On television, Walter Sande played Horatio Bullwinkle on Tugboat Annie (1958) and Papa Holstrum on The Farmer's Daughter (1963-1966).

Trivia: An actor indelibly associated with classic Americana given his iconic portrayals of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, tall, tousle-haired Fess Parker began life in Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in nearby San Angelo, where his parents farmed peanuts and watermelons, and raised cattle. Following service in the military during WWII (where he participated in "clean-up" operations in the Philippines), Parker returned to the United States, and attended both the University of Texas and the University of California. He soon discovered a flair for acting and hit the stage in the touring company of Mister Roberts, then entered films in 1952, enjoying his first sizeable role -- a Southern-accented ballplayer -- in The Kid From Left Field (1953). It was his one-scene bit as a terrified witness to an "alien close encounter" in the 1954 horror classic Them! (1954), however, that brought Parker to the attention of Walt Disney, and somewhat ironically. Disney had considered casting a major Hollywood star as Crockett (such as Glenn Ford or Sterling Hayden), but gave up on this idea and, it is said, briefly considered future Gunsmoke headliner James Arness. Walt went to see the Arness-starrer Them! for this reason, and passed on Arness for Crockett but felt instantly convinced (and supposedly shouted out "There's our Crockett!") when Parker appeared on the screen. The actor began by portraying Crockett on ABC's Disneyland television series, and the rest is history: during the period of 1954-6, Davy Crockett mania swept through the country, first with the smash single "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," then with a blizzard of Crockett-themed merchandise aimed squarely at small children - everything from lunchboxes, to action figures, to the quintessential Davy Crockett coonskin cap.Disney and Parker parlayed the Crockett success into features in 1955 and 1956, but two years after the Crockett popularity began, it fizzled. Parker remained on the Disney lot until 1958, starring in such films as The Great Locomotive Chase (1956), Westward Ho, the Wagons! (1957), Old Yeller (1957), and Light in the Forest (1958). His relationship with Disney more or less ended, however, when he refused to appear in the studio's Native American drama Tonka (1958) (a revisionist version of Custer's Last Stand) opposite Sal Mineo - and was promptly suspended for doing so.His film stardom leveling off after 1959, Parker started a family by marrying Marcella Rinehart in 1960, with whom he had numerous children and grandchildren. He began a television comeback in 1962 with an indifferent sitcom version of the old Capra drama Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1962). He was more successful, though, with his five-year tenure in the title role of the weekly NBC adventure-fest Daniel Boone, which lasted six seasons (1964-70), running consistently on Thursday nights from 7:30-8:30pm; at its peak, the program's popularity even topped that of Crockett. Parker signed for his last dramatic role in the 1972 Climb An Angry Mountain.In the years that followed, Parker bowed out of the limelight, and entered an entirely unrelated field: that of real estate. He became an entrepreneur in the mid-1970s, and built his holdings into a small yet phenomenally lucrative empire that included a mobile home park, luxury hotels, and a sprawling vineyard with a gift shop that sold Crockett memorabilia. Parker died of natural causes at the age of 85 in March 2010, at his home in California's Santa Ynez Valley.

Trivia: The son of an Episcopal priest, John Gallaudet commenced his professional acting career after graduating from Williams College. He appeared on both Broadway and in stock opposite actors ranging from Fred Astaire to Helen Hayes. The slight, thinnish-haired Gallaudet spent several years in the 1930s as the resident character star of Columbia Pictures' "B" unit, playing everything from kindhearted doctors to serpentlike crooks. He owns the distinction of being one the few actors to ever "murder" Rita Hayworth, dispatching the lovely young actress with a poisoned baseball glove in the 1937 potboiler Girls Can Play. Active in films until the 1950s, John Gallaudet was well known and highly regarded throughout the film community for his off-camera vocation as a champion golfer.

Trivia: Actor John Beradino is best known for playing wise, beneficent Dr. Steve Hardy on the soap opera General Hospital since the show's inception in 1963 until a few months prior to his death in May 1996. His acting career began in childhood when he made a few appearances in the Our Gang comedies. Between 1937 and 1953, Bearding was a professional baseball player. Over his career as a second baseman and shortstop, he hit .249 and 387 RBI with 36 homers in 912 games with the St. Louis Browns, Cleveland Indians, and Pittsburgh Pirates. A knee injury forced his retirement and he returned to acting. Before landing his General Hospital role, Beradino guest starred on numerous series and was a regular on the short-lived cop show, The New Breed (1960-1961). As Dr. Hardy on GH, Beradino earned three Emmy nominations. In 1993, he was honored with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

Trivia: A protégé of the legendary Groucho Marx, writer Gene Thompson got his big showbiz break after an amicable backstage encounter with famed thespian Dame May Whitty. Maintaining correspondence with the actress until graduating high school and seeking fame in Los Angeles, Thompson would later write for some of the most popular shows in television history, including The Bob Newhart Show and The Beverly Hillbillies. A San Francisco native, Thompson's chance encounter with Whitty at a production of Romeo and Juliet quickly led to another chance encounter with Marx at the actress' home. Soon hiring Thompson as a sketch writer, Marx secured the aspiring comedic talent a spot on the popular radio program Duffy's Tavern. Later attending college at U.C.C. Berkeley and U.C. Santa Barbara before taking a job as director of publications for the Army Air Corps of Engineers in Germany, Thompson spent a decade paying the bills by writing advertising copy in San Francisco and New York, before finally relocating to Los Angeles and finding his true calling as a television writer. Penning scripts for such popular programs as Gilligan's Island and My Favorite Martian in addition to others, Thompson concentrated on novel writing from the latter 1970s until his cancer-related death on April 14, 2001.

Trivia: Ron Hargrave was born in New York in 1930 and was the son of vaudeville performers. At age six, he moved with his family to California, where he eventually aspired to a career in movies. In his early twenties, he began doing stunt work and getting bit roles in movies -- including 20th Century Fox's Vicki, a remake of I Wake Up Screaming -- and television, but his big break didn't come until he was drafted. While serving in uniform, he crossed paths with comic Lou Costello, who decided to take over managing Hargrave's career once he was back in civilian life. After a string of uncredited bit parts, he finally got a featured role, in the final Abbott & Costello film, Dance With Me, Henry (1956), playing Ernie, a ukulele-toting hipster who is always annoying the character played by Costello -- this gave him some very funny scenes with the two comedians and some good musical performance bits as well. Hargrave was later signed to MGM Records and recorded a handful of unsuccessful singles; much more significant was his work while on the MGM lot as a songwriter on the title tune from the movie High School Confidential, which was shot at MGM; Jerry Lee Lewis was seen singing and playing the song from the back of a flatbed truck in one of the most famous opening credit sequences in history, and one of Lewis' most oft-compiled movie scenes. The movie proved the high-point of Hargrave's songwriting career, and his movie career only lasted until 1960, his last big-screen appearance coming in 1960, as a Hawaiian singer in Mervyn LeRoy's comedy Wake Me When It's Over. His music career lasted into the late '60s.

Trivia: Sharp-featured character actor James Griffith set out in life to be a professional musician. He eased into acting instead, working the little-theatre route in his hometown of Los Angeles. In 1939, Griffith appeared in his first professional production, They Can't Get You Down. Following World War II service, he made his first film, Black Ice (1946). Steadily employed in westerns, James Griffith was generally cast as an outlaw, save for a few comparative good-guy assignments such as Sheriff Pat Garrett in The Law vs. Billy the Kid (1954).

Trivia: Larry Thor was a sometime movie and television actor who started his professional entertainment career doing voice work, as an announcer on radio. Born in 1916, he grew up in Lundar, Manitoba, Canada, in what was basically an Icelandic village. He broke into radio in 1937, working at various stations for a decade after, until he arrived in Los Angeles in 1946. His rich, resonant voice gave him a career as an announcer, with occasional bits of acting. In the early '50s, he crossed over into film work when he played a sports announcer in the 20th Century Fox baseball biopic The Pride of St. Louis, telling of the life of pitcher Dizzy Dean (Dan Dailey).Although he occasionally played announcers in subsequent movies, including The Kid From Left Field (1953) and Zero Hour! (1957), Thor also moved into straight acting roles, usually smaller or supporting parts where he could play authority figures -- he was in two key early productions of Roger Corman, Five Guns West and The Fast and the Furious. Once in a while, Thor also got to play a major role, such as that of Major Coulter, the military physician in Bert I. Gordon's The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), whose death scene is one of the highlights of the movie's low-budget thrills.Much of Thor's career from the mid-'50s onward, especially after the decline of radio, was spent on television, in every kind of series from M Squad to My Three Sons. He also made recordings, especially of children's records, and was still doing announcing work in documentaries and industrial films right into the 1970s. Typical of the odd arc of his career, a result of his specialized talent, in 1970, the same year in which he appeared in Fox's Tora! Tora! Tora!, he also was the voice of Kakafonous A. Dischord in The Phantom Tollbooth. He passed away in 1976.

Trivia: From 1930 to 1934, American actress Ruth Warren was a contractee at Fox Studios. A slight woman with wide eyes and pursed lips, Warren essayed sizeable character roles in such Fox films as Lightnin' (1930), Six Cylinder Love (1931), and Zoo in Budapest (1933). She played bit roles from 1935 until her retirement in 1958. Laurel and Hardy buffs will remember Ruth Warren as the gossip-dispensing Mrs. Addlequist in Our Relations (1936).

Trivia: Bookish-looking American actor King Donovan was first seen on Broadway in 1948's The Vigil and on screen in The Man From Texas (1950). Though he appeared in dozens of films, Donovan is best known for his participation in such sci-fi classics as Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Magnetic Monster (1953) and especially The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Musical comedy fans remember Donovan for his portrayal of the saturnine assistant director in Singin' in the Rain (1952). His many TV appearances include the recurring role of Harvey Helm on the Bob Cummings sitcom Love That Bob! and Herb Thornton on the 1965-66 family comedy Please Don't Eat the Daisies. Long married to comedienne Imogene Coca, King Donovan frequently co-starred with his wife in such stage productions as The Girls of 509 and his last theatrical effort, 1982's Nothing Lasts Forever.

Trivia: Broadway actress Kathryn Givney first came to Hollywood in 1930 to repeat her stage role as "golf widow" Mrs. Bascomb in the film version of the hit musical Follow Through. She then returned to the stage, reemerging before the cameras as a character actress in 1948. Usually cast as imperious dowagers, she is best remembered for such characterizations as the haughty Mrs. Rhinelander in My Friend Irma and Salvation Army general Matilda B. Cartwright in Guys and Dolls. Kathryn Givney was also a familiar presence on television; one of her best TV assignments was as a reclusive old woman who "kidnaps" housewife Donna Stone on a mid-'60s installment of The Donna Reed Show.

Trivia: The son of vaudeville monologist Julius Tannen, Charles Tannen launched his own film career in 1936. For the rest of his movie "life," Tannen was most closely associated with 20th Century Fox, playing minor roles in films both large (John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath) and not so large (Laurel and Hardy's Great Guns). Rarely receiving screen credit, Tannen continued playing utility roles well into the 1960s, showing up in such Fox productions as The Fly (1958) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). Charles Tannen's older brother, William, was also an active film performer during this period.

Trivia: American movie stunt man John McKee began accepting acting roles somewhere around 1945. Though his name is not listed in The Baseball Encyclopedia, we can safely assume that McKee had some pro baseball experience of some sort. He was seen as a ballplayer in such films as It Happens Every Spring (1949), Three Little Words (1950), Angels in the Outfield (1951), Pride of St. Louis (1952), The Big Leaguer (1953) and The Kid From Left Field (1953). As late as 1978 he was still in uniform, playing Ralph Houk in the made-for-TV One in a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story. John McKee was also on call for military-officer roles, notably in the war films The Gallant Hours (1960) and McArthur (1976).