Trivia: The man who turned white shoes into a fashion statement, singer/actor Pat Boone was born in Florida and raised in Nashville. At 17, Boone was starring on his own musical radio show, and before reaching voting age he had achieved nationwide stardom via his appearances on Arthur Godfrey's various radio and TV programs. Many of his hit recordings were "cover" versions of songs previously made famous by such black artists as Fats Domino and Little Richard (back in the less enlightened mid-1950s, many radio stations were hesitant to play "race music" unless it had been "legitimized" by a white performer). While starring on the prime time TVer The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom in 1958, Boone, already married for 5 years and the father of four children, graduated Cum Laude from Columbia University. He launched his film career in 1957, appearing in such family fare as Bernardine (1957), April Love (1957), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) and State Fair (1961). During the early 1960s, Boone starred in a handful of British films, produced by his own Cooga Mooga productions. In one of these, The Yellow Canary (1963), he attempted to shake up his established image by portraying a nasty, ill-tempered rock star. Publicly, Boone was a deeply religious man and model husband and father. He wrote several books concerning his born-again Christianity, as well as his best-selling "teen advice" volume Twixt Twelve and Twenty. Pat Boone is the father of recording artist Debbie Boone.

Trivia: Swedish siren Ann-Margret immigrated to the U.S. with her family at the age of seven, settling in a Chicago suburb and later studying Drama at Northwestern University. Despite an innate bashfulness, the girl set out to become a musical entertainer, making her professional debut as a singer at the age of 17. Fortunately, she was spotted by comedian George Burns, who hired her for his Las Vegas show and arranged for several professional doors to be opened for his protégée. Her first film was Pocketful of Miracles (1961), in which she played Bette Davis' daughter; this was followed by a lead in State Fair the following year. Ann-Margret tended to be withdrawn when interviewed, which earned her the media's "Sour Apple" award as least cooperative newcomer. But she was able to overcome this initial bad press via a show-stopping appearance at the 1962 Academy Awards telecast, which turned her into an "overnight" national favorite and encouraged the producers of Bye Bye Birdie (1963) to build up her role. Perhaps the best indication of her total public acceptance was her animated appearance in a 1963 episode of The Flintstones (as Ann Margrock). Ann-Margret's career faltered in the mid-'60s thanks to a string of forgettable pictures like Made in Paris (1966) and Kitten With a Whip (1964). (One of the few highlights of this period, however, was her appearance in Elvis Presley's Viva Las Vegas in 1964, which led to an offscreen relation with The King.) Her career in doldrums, Ann-Margret marshalled a comeback in the early '70s thanks to the tireless efforts of her husband and manager, former actor Roger Smith. Sold-out Las Vegas and concert performances were part of her career turnabout, although the most crucial aspect was her Oscar nomination for a difficult role in 1971's Carnal Knowledge. But the comeback nearly ended before it began in 1972 when the entertainer was seriously injured in a fall during her Vegas act. With the help of physical rehabilitation and plastic surgery (not to mention the loving ministrations and encouragement of Smith), the actress made a complete recovery and went on to even greater career heights. She received her second Oscar nomination for her bravura performance in the rock-opera film Tommy (1975), where, in one of the high points of '70s cinema bizarre, she sang a number while swimming in baked beans. Ann-Margret was equally impressive (though in a less messy manner) in such powerhouse TV movies as Who Will Love My Children? (1983) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1984). The low point of Ann-Margret's early-80s career doubtless arrived when she agreed to act in Hal Ashby's lousy 1982 gambling drama Lookin' to Get Out (aside a scream-happy Jon Voight) -- and probably regretted it for years afterward. A few triumphs marked the 1980s as well, however, such as the actress's turn as Steffy Blondell in Neil Simon's enjoyably bittersweet comedy-drama I Ought to Be in Pictures, and her role as a barmaid who strikes up an extramarital affair with - and later weds - Gene Hackman, in Bud Yorkin's finely-wrought domestic drama Twice in a Lifetime (1985). After Newsies (1992), Disney's glaringly awful attempt to revive the period musical, Ann-Margret took time out of her packed schedule to write her 1993 autobiography Ann-Margret: My Story, a work revelatory about herself and her own personal demons that nonetheless evinces respect toward her show-business mentors and co-workers. She exuded warmth as the bon vivant who falls in-between bickering Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the 1993 box office hit Grumpy Old Men and its lackluster 1995 sequel, Grumpier Old Men (and played a satisfying straight man throughout). Yet the high profile of the Old Men releases made them exceptions to the actress's output in the mid-late nineties and early 2000s, which - though of varying quality - placed infinitely greater weight on television work than Ann-Margret had at any earlier point in her career. (In fact, for a period of about ten years, she became a veritable telemovie staple on par with Mary Tyler Moore and Meredith Baxter-Birney). These titles include but are not limited to: Nobody's Children (1994), Scarlett (1994), Seduced by Madness: The Diane Borchardt Story, Life of the Party: The Pamela Harriman Story (1998), Happy Face Murders (1999), Blonde (2001) and A Place Called Home (2004). One big-screen exception arrived in the late 1999 football drama Any Given Sunday, where Oliver Stone gave Ann-Margret her meatiest role since Carnal Knowledge, as the alcoholic mother of team owner Christina Pagliacci (Cameron Diaz. It entailed only a small part amid a massive ensemble cast (Dennis Quaid, Al Pacino, Jamie Foxx, James Woods, others), but provided an excellent showcase for the actress's craftsmanship. She landed a bit part as Wendy Meyers, the mother of Jennifer Aniston's character, in the Aniston-Vince Vaughn romantic comedy The Break-Up, and joined Tim Allen and Martin Short for that same year's Buena Vista holiday sequel Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. As the new decade began, she continued to appear regularly in projects as diverse as The 10th Kingdom, Taxi, The Break-Up, and Old Dogs. In 2011 she starred in the comedy All's Faire in Love as the queen of a Renaissance fair.

Trivia: The son of an Italian-born cabinetmaker, Bobby Darin briefly attended Hunter College, then supported himself as a singing waiter and musician at a Catskills resort. After scratching out a fitfully profitable existence as a commercial-jingle composer, Darin became a professional singer in 1956. He sent a demo record to up-and-coming record executive Don Kirschner, which resulted in a contract. Three flop singles later, Darin half-jokingly recorded a nonsense number titled "Splish Splash"--which turned out to be his first bonafide hit. Not wishing to be typed as a rock-and-roller, Darin adapted the old Kurt Weill/Bertoldt Brecht ballad "Moritat" into the top-selling "Mack the Knife"; this enabled him to break away from the onus of "teenage idol" and broaden his appeal to adults. Darin was eventually picked up by Universal Pictures to star in a series of lightweight but popular musical films, often co-starring his first wife, Sandra Dee. After turning in powerful dramatic performances in Pressure Point (1962) and Captain Newman MD (1963), Darin graduated from pop personality to serious actor; in fact, he was Oscar-nominated for his work in Newman. By the end of the 1960s, however, Darin's star was on the downgrade, and he seemed to have trouble keeping apace of changing musical tastes. Bobby Darin was in the process of making a comeback when he died at the age of 37, following open-heart surgery.

Trivia: The daughter of a New York City cop, 14-year-old Alice Faye lied about her age to secure her first chorus girl job in 1929. While appearing in the 1933-1934 edition of George White's Scandals, Faye became the protégée of the show's star, Rudy Vallee, touring with Vallee's orchestra as vocalist. At Vallee's insistence, she was cast in the 1934 Fox Studios film version of George White's Scandals, elevated to the leading role when Lillian Harvey walked off the set. Despite unpleasant tabloid coverage when Vallee's wife sued her for alienation of her husband's affections, Faye was kept on by Fox, which lightened her already blonde hair and attempted to groom her as the "new Jean Harlow." After a few negligible leading roles in such Fox productions as She Learned About Sailors (1934) and 365 Nights in Hollywood (1935), she established her screen image as a tough, contralto-voiced cookie with a heart of gold, her popularity ascending with each successive film. During this period, she wed her frequent co-star Tony Martin, a union which lasted until 1940. Though a favorite with fans and coworkers alike, Faye regularly put her film career in jeopardy by clashing with 20th Century Fox head man Darryl F. Zanuck, who, realizing that he couldn't very well throw her off the payroll (not with such box-office hits as In Old Chicago and Rose of Washington Square to her credit), decided to "punish" her by hiring Betty Grable as Faye's potential successor. The press had a field day fabricating a deadly rivalry between Faye and Grable, though in fact the actresses got along reasonably well and were felicitously teamed in Tin Pan Alley (1940). Faye's feud with Zanuck came to a head in 1945 when her leading role in Fallen Angel was cut down to practically nothing. She quit movies cold, electing to devote her time to her second husband, bandleader Phil Harris, and her two daughters. Though banned from films by Zanuck, Faye flourished on radio, co-starring with Harris on a popular comedy series which ran for several successful seasons. In 1962, she returned to the screen in the ill-advised remake of State Fair, in which the 47-year-old actress played the mother of Pat Boone. She made several TV guest appearances in the 1960s and 1970s, toured the nightclub and straw hat circuit, and co-starred with John Payne in a Broadway revival of Good News. Since the death of Phil Harris in 1994, Alice Faye participated in several TV specials about Hollywood's "Golden Age," and remained in contact with her numerous, still-faithful fans until her death from cancer in early May 1998.

Trivia: The daughter of a Chicago architect, Pamela Tiffin was attending Hunter College when she began her modeling career. Tiffin was pulling down 1,500 dollars per week as a cover girl before entering films at 19. The best of her films was her second, Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961), in which she played scatterbrained Southern heiress Scarlet Hazeltine. Toward the end of her Hollywood stay, Tiffin was briefly married to magazine publisher Clay Felker. After a few years in medium-budget European films, Pamela Tiffin retired, returning to American television for the AFI salute to former mentor Billy Wilder.

Trivia: His parents wanted him to be lawyer, but S. Yewell Tompkins decided instead to major in liberal arts at the University of Wisconsin. A professional actor from 1928, he toured in stock companies then spent several lean years in New York, during which time he changed his name to Tom Ewell. He appeared in the first of a string of Broadway flops in 1934, occasionally enjoying longer runs in such productions as Brother Rat and Family Portrait. A trip to Hollywood in 1940 led to a handful of bit parts but little else. After four years in the Navy, Ewell finally landed a bona fide Broadway hit starring in John Loves Mary in 1947. This led to his "official" screen debut as Judy Holliday's philandering husband in Adam's Rib (1949). Hardly the romantic lead type, Ewell's crumpled "everyman" countenance served him well in such screen roles as Bill Mauldin's archetypal G.I. Willie in Up Front (1951) and Willie and Joe Back at the Front (1952). Back on Broadway in 1954, he won a Tony Award for his peerless performance as a "summer bachelor" in George Axelrod's The Seven Year Itch, repeating this characterization opposite Marilyn Monroe in the 1955 screen version. He went on to play wry variations of this role in Frank Tashlin's The Lieutenant Wore Skirts (1955) and The Girl Can't Help It (1956), in which his screen partners included such lovelies as Sheree North, Rita Moreno, and Jayne Mansfield. In 1960, he starred in The Tom Ewell Show, a one-season sitcom in which he played a standard harried suburbanite. Various illnesses and recurrent alcoholism made it increasingly difficult for Ewell to find work in the 1970s; his best showing during this period was as Robert Blake's disheveled pal Billy on the weekly TVer Baretta. Tom Ewell retired in 1983, after a brief stint as Doc Killian in TV's Best of the West and a character role in the Rodney Dangerfield film Easy Money.

Trivia: American actor Wally Cox looked and played the role of the bespectacled, introverted intellectual both before the cameras and in life. Fascinated with all things scientific and devoted to the study of insects, Cox seemed as unlikely a candidate for major stardom as he was an improbable roommate for Marlon Brando. In fact, he was both. While building his reputation in small clubs as a monologist, Cox shared quarters with Brando, his best friend since childhood. Cox didn't really tell jokes in his club act; he would relate the offbeat exploits of his boyhood pal Dufo or do a dead-on imitation of his humorless, doltish Army drill sergeant; these were characterizations rather than routines, a gentler version of the sort of work done years later by Whoopi Goldberg. Playing occasional small parts on TV (he appeared very briefly as a baker in the 1952 film The Sniper, minus his familiar eyeglasses), Cox was tapped by producer Fred Coe to appear in a 1952 summer-replacement comedy series on NBC, Mr. Peepers, where he played Robinson Peepers, the shy, knowledgeable high school teacher at Jefferson High. Mr. Peepers garnered excellent ratings and won numerous awards, including an Emmy for Cox. As big a star as he would ever be, Cox was rushed into numerous nightclub engagements, which unfortunately fell flat because of inappropriate bookings and because audiences didn't want to see Cox as anyone other than Peepers. A 1955 sitcom, The Adventures of Hiram Holliday, starred Wally as an unlikely globe-trotting adventurer; alas, it was scheduled directly opposite ABC's powerhouse Disneyland. Cox would spend most of the rest of his career playing variations of Peepers on other star's sitcoms and variety series, occasionally breaking the mold by playing a murderer or bon vivant. He also tried his hand as a playwright, a field in which he displayed considerable skill. Once again under contract to NBC in the mid '60s, Cox became a regular on the comedy quiz show Hollywood Squares, where he adopted the image of a bored know-it-all. It is this Wally Cox that most viewers remember, not the brilliant comic actor who convinced his '50s fans that he was Mr. Peepers, not just a man playing a part. Wally Cox died of a sudden heart attack in 1973; he was cremated, and his ashes were discreetly scattered at an undisclosed spot (and in defiance of municipal laws) by his old friend and ex-roommate Marlon Brando.

Trivia: Starting his Hollywood career in or around 1951, American actor Robert Foulk was alternately passive and authoritative in such westerns as Last of the Badmen (1957), The Tall Stranger (1957), The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and Cast a Long Shadow (1958). He remained a frontiersmen for his year-long stint as bartender Joe Kingston on the Joel McCrea TV shoot-em-up Wichita Town (1959) (though he reverted to modern garb as the Anderson family's next-door neighbor in the '50s sitcom Father Knows Best). In non-westerns, Foulk usually played professional men, often uniformed. Some of his parts were fleeting enough not to have any designation but "character bit" (vide The Love Bug [1968]), but otherwise there was no question Foulk was in charge: as a doctor in Tammy and the Doctor (1963), a police official in Bunny O'Hare (1971) or a railroad conductor in Emperor of the North (1973). Robert Foulk was given extensive screen time in the Bowery Boys' Hold That Hypnotist (1957), as the title character; and in Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), playing straight as Sheriff Glick opposite such "Merrie Men" as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin Sammy Davis Jr. and Bing Crosby.

Trivia: A lovely brunette starlet with RKO from 1935-1939, Kay Sutton married and divorced millionaire Daniel Reid Topping and cinematographer Edward Cronjager. She worked steadily through the 1930s and '40s, most notably in The Bank Dick (1940). Sutton last appeared in Pajama Party in 1964. She died in 1988 at the age of 72.

Trivia: Though he is most famous for the supremely theatrical best-selling 1970s album Bat Out of Hell, Meat Loaf has been acting almost as long as he has been singing. Born Marvin Lee Aday in Dallas, accounts regarding his stage name place its origins in either a childhood nickname or a high school football incident. Either way, by the time Meat Loaf moved to Los Angeles at age 20 to pursue music, the moniker had stuck. After the first band he formed broke up, Meat Loaf found work on stage in the road company of the notorious late-'60s rock musical Hair. Landing in New York in the early '70s, Meat Loaf continued to do theater while trying to make it in the music world. After playing the part on stage, Meat Loaf made his movie debut as the ill-fated Eddie in the flop-turned-midnight movie classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Two years later, Meat Loaf's music took precedence with the release of Bat Out of Hell (1977). Powered by several dramatic singles, Bat Out of Hell became one of the all-time top-selling albums. Various problems, including writer's block, though, turned Meat Loaf's focus back to movies in the late '70s. After appearing in the comedy flop Americathon (1979), Meat Loaf starred in Alan Rudolph's comedy Roadie (1980). While he managed to make several albums in the 1980s, none of them came close to Bat Out of Hell's popularity. Meat Loaf's 1980s movies, including the vehicle Dead Ringer (1982) and the Anthony Michael Hall thriller Out of Bounds (1986) did not fare well, either. Meat Loaf filed for bankruptcy, but his slide towards obscurity began to reverse itself in the early '90s. Meat Loaf's presence in the Steve Martin evangelist comedy-drama Leap of Faith (1992) signaled his arrival as an estimable character actor. His music career also revived by the best-selling Bat Out of Hell II: Back to Hell (1993), Meat Loaf once again turned his attention to singing; his mid-'90s albums suffered the same fate as his 1980s oeuvre. By the late '90s, Meat Loaf, often credited as Meat Loaf Aday, returned to acting in an eclectic mix of films. Along with co-starring as a criminal in the Patrick Swayze actioner Black Dog (1998), Meat Loaf played supporting roles in the Sharon Stone-Kieran Culkin drama The Mighty (1998), the offbeat ensemble piece Outside Ozona (1998), and the Spice Girls romp Spice World (1998). Finding a balance between movies and music, Meat Loaf did a segment of VH1's Storytellers that resulted in a 1999 CD and earned positive notices for his performances as a bigoted sheriff in Crazy in Alabama (1999) and the physically freakish but genuinely sympathetic Robert Paulsen in David Fincher's controversial Fight Club (1999). It was this cultish role that guaranteed him supporting work in both high-octane genre fare (Formula 51, The Salton Sea) as well as uncompromising indies (Focus) for the next decade or so.