Trivia: As a teenager, American performer Betty Garrett won a scholarship to New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, and in 1938 she debuted onstage in the Mercury Theater production of Danton's Death. Later she danced with the Martha Graham company, sang in nightclubs and resort hotels, and held down odd jobs between engagements. In 1942 Garrett debuted on Broadway in the revue Let Freedom Ring, leading to other Broadway appearances. For her work in Call Me Mister she won the Donaldson Award in 1946, after which MGM signed her to a movie contract. She went on to make five musicals in the late '40s, impressing critics with her singing, dancing, and bright comic acting; as an energetic and effervescent second lead, she typically played the heroine's best friend. Garrett took two years off to give birth to two children; meanwhile, her husband, actor Larry Parks, admitted to the House Un-American Activities Committee that he had been a Communist. This ruined Garrett's screen career for several years, during which she and Parks appeared in a nightclub act and toured the U.S. with a play. In the mid-'50s she appeared in two more films and had the chance to renew her career; however, her husband was still blacklisted, so she chose to retire from the screen. She and Parks went on to work in stock and occasionally on TV, but they derived their income primarily from real estate. In the mid-'70s Garrett had a recurring role as Archie Bunker's neighbor on the TV sitcom All In the Family, and played landlady Edna Babish on Laverne and Shirley.

Trivia: The only child of a very young married couple, American actress Janet Leigh spent her childhood moving from town to town due to her father's changing jobs. A bright child who skipped several grades in school, Leigh took music and dancing lessons, making her public debut at age 10 as a baton twirler for a marching band. Her favorite times were the afternoons spent at the local movie house, which she referred to as her "babysitter." In 1946, Leigh's mother was working at a ski lodge where actress Norma Shearer was vacationing; impressed by a photograph of Leigh, Shearer arranged for the girl (whose prior acting experience consisted of a college play) to be signed with the MCA talent agency. One year later Leigh was at MGM, playing the ingenue in the 1947 film Romance of Rosy Ridge. The actress became one of the busiest contractees at the studio, building her following with solid performances in such films as Little Women (1949), The Doctor and the Girl (1950), and Scaramouche (1952) -- and catching the eye of RKO Radio's owner Howard Hughes, who hoped that her several RKO appearances (on loan from MGM) would lead to something substantial in private life. Instead, Leigh married Tony Curtis (her second husband), and the pair became the darlings of fan magazines and columnists, as well as occasional co-stars (Houdini [1953], The Vikings [1958], Who Was That Lady? [1960]). Even as this "perfect" Hollywood marriage deteriorated, Leigh's career prospered. Among her significant roles in the '60s were that of Frank Sinatra's enigmatic lady friend in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Paul Newman's ex-wife in Harper (1966), and, of course, the unfortunate embezzler in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), who met her demise in the nude (actually covered by a moleskin) and covered with blood (actually chocolate sauce, which photographed better) in the legendary "shower scene." In the '80s, Leigh curtailed her film and TV appearances, though her extended legacy as both the star/victim of Psycho and the mother of actress Jamie Lee Curtis still found her a notable place in the world of cinema even if her career was no longer "officially" active.

Trivia: A private school-educated everyman who could play outrageous comedy and wrenching tragedy, Jack Lemmon burst onto the movie scene as a 1950s Columbia contract player and remained a beloved star until his death in 2001. Whether through humor or pathos, he excelled at illuminating the struggles of average men against a callous world; as director Billy Wilder once noted, "There was a little bit of genius in everything he did." Born in 1925, the son of a Boston doughnut company executive, Lemmon was educated at Phillips Andover Academy and taught himself to play piano as a teen. A budding thespian by the time he entered Harvard, he was elected president of the famed Hasty Pudding Club. After his college career was briefly interrupted by a stint in the Navy at the end of World War II, Lemmon graduated from Harvard and headed to New York to pursue acting. By the early '50s, Lemmon had appeared in hundreds of live TV roles, including in the dramatic series Kraft Television Theater and Robert Montgomery Presents, as well as co-starring with first wife, Cynthia Stone, in two short-lived sitcoms. After Lemmon landed a major role in the 1953 Broadway revival of Room Service, a talent scout for Columbia Pictures convinced the actor to try Hollywood instead. Defying Columbia chief Harry Cohn's demand that he change his last name lest the critics take advantage of it in negative reviews, Lemmon quickly made a positive impression in his first film, the Judy Holliday comic hit It Should Happen to You (1954) and quickly became a reliably nimble comic presence at Columbia. A loan out to Warner Bros. for the smash Mister Roberts (1955), however, truly began to reveal his ability. Drawing on his Navy memories to play the wily Ensign Pulver, Lemmon held his own opposite heavyweights Henry Fonda and James Cagney and won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his fourth film. A free-agent star by the end of the 1950s, he began one of his two most auspicious creative collaborations when writer/director Billy Wilder tapped him to play one of the cross-dressing musicians in the gender-tweaking comic classic Some Like It Hot (1959). As enthusiastically female bull fiddler Daphne to Tony Curtis' preening Lothario sax player Josephine, Lemmon danced a sidesplitting tango with millionaire suitor Joe E. Brown and delivered a sublime speechless reaction to Brown's nonchalant acceptance of his manhood. Fresh off a Best Actor nomination for Hot, he then gave an image-defining performance in Wilder's multiple-Oscar winner The Apartment (1960). As ambitious New York office drone C.C. Baxter, who climbs the corporate ladder by loaning his small one-bedroom to his philandering bosses, Lemmon was both the likeable cynic and beleaguered romantic, perfectly embodying Wilder's sardonic view of a venal world. Lemmon's turn as the put-upon quotidian schnook pervaded the rest of his career. Determined to prove that he could play serious roles as well as comic, Lemmon campaigned to play Lee Remick's alcoholic husband in Blake Edwards' film adaptation of the teleplay Days of Wine and Roses (1962). Revealing the darker side of middle-class desperation, Lemmon earned still more critical kudos and another Oscar nomination. Despite this triumph, he returned to comedy, re-teaming with Wilder and The Apartment co-star Shirley MacLaine in Irma la Douce (1963). Though the love story between a Parisian prostitute and a cop-turned-lover in disguise was a lesser effort, Irma la Douce became a major hit for the trio. Continuing to display his skill at offsetting his characters' unseemly behavior with his innate, ordinary-guy affability, Lemmon's mid-'60s comic roles included a lascivious landlord in Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963) and a homicidal husband in How to Murder Your Wife (1965). Lemmon began his second legendary creative partnership when Wilder cast Walter Matthau opposite him in The Fortune Cookie (1966). The duo's popularity was cemented when they re-teamed for the hit film version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple (1968). Despite his genuine pathos as suicidal, anal-retentive divorcé Felix Unger, Lemmon still managed to evoke great hilarity with Felix's technique for clearing his sinuses, becoming a superbly neurotic foil to Matthau's very casual Oscar Madison. Matthau subsequently starred in Kotch (1971), Lemmon's sole directorial effort, and Lemmon appeared in scion Charles Matthau's The Grass Harp (1995). Lemmon and Matthau also fittingly co-starred in Wilder's final film, Buddy Buddy (1981). After starring in The Out-of-Towners (1970) and Avanti! (1972), Lemmon took minimal salary in order to play a disillusioned middle-aged businessman in the drama Save the Tiger (1973). Though the film did little business, Lemmon finally won the Best Actor Oscar that had eluded him for over a decade and moved easily between comedy and drama from then on. As in The Odd Couple, he marshaled both humor and gloom for his portrayal of an unemployed, despondent gray flannel suit executive in Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1972). His reunion with Wilder and Matthau for another screen version of the fast-talking newspaperman comedy The Front Page (1974), however, was strictly for laughs. Working less frequently in films in the mid-'70s, Lemmon managed to retain his status as one of the best actors in the business with his passionate turn as a conscience-stricken nuclear power plant executive in the prescient drama The China Syndrome (1979). Along with the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Lemmon also earned an Oscar nomination for Syndrome. He received another Oscar nod when he reprised his 1978 Tony-nominated performance as a dying press agent in the film version of Tribute (1980). Lemmon continued to push himself as an actor throughout the 1980s and 1990s. As an anguished father who seeks the truth about his son's disappearance in Constantin Costa-Gavras' politically charged Missing (1982), he repeated his Cannes win and Oscar nomination diptych. In 1986, Lemmon returned to Broadway in the challenging role of wretched patriarch James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. Though critics began voicing their doubts after such films as Dad (1989), Lemmon offset his affection for sentiment in the early '90s with vivid performances as a slightly seedy character in JFK (1991), a fading, high-strung real estate agent in David Mamet's harsh Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and a truant father in Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993). Lemmon proved that older actors could still draw crowds when he co-starred with Matthau as warring neighbors in the hit comedy Grumpy Old Men (1993) and the imaginatively titled sequel Grumpier Old Men (1995). The two concluded their decades-long, perennially appealing odd couple act with Out to Sea (1997) and The Odd Couple II (1998). Along with gathering such lifetime laurels as the Kennedy Center Honors and the Screen Actors' Guild trophy, Lemmon also continued to win nominations and awards for his work in such TV dramas as the 1997 version of 12 Angry Men (inspiring Golden Globe rival Ving Rhames to famously surrender his prize to Lemmon) and Inherit the Wind (1999). Lemmon's Emmy-worthy turn as a serenely wise dying professor in Tuesdays With Morrie proved to be his final major role and an appropriate end to his stellar career. One year after longtime friend Matthau passed away in July 2000, Lemmon succumbed to cancer on June 27, 2001. He was survived by his second wife, Felicia Farr (whom he married in 1962), and his two children.

Trivia: Actor Dick York started out as a child performer on radio, playing important roles in such airwaves favorites as Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. In the early '50s, York began showing up in New York-based instructional films, including a now-infamous reel about proper dating etiquette. Establishing himself as one of Broadway's most versatile young character actors, he was seen in such major productions as Tea and Sympathy, Bus Stop, and Night of the Auk. In films from 1955, York's most famous movie role was schoolteacher Bertram Cates in Inherit the Wind, the 1960 dramatization of the Scopes Monkey Trial. Though a prolific TV guest star, he didn't settle down on a weekly series until 1962, when he co-starred with Gene Kelly and Leo G. Carroll in a short-lived video adaptation of Going My Way. Two years later, he landed his signature role: Darren Stephens, the eternally flustered husband of glamorous witch Samantha Stephens (Elizabeth Montgomery), in Bewitched. He remained with the series until 1969, when a recurring back ailment (the legacy of an on-set injury suffered while filming the 1959 feature They Came to Cordura) forced York to relinquish the role of Darren to Dick Sargent. Though he was for all intents and purposes retired from acting, York remained active on behalf of several pro-social causes. He was the founder of Acting for Life, an organization designed to help the homeless help themselves. Living a spartan existence in Grand Rapids, MI, an increasingly infirm Dick York tirelessly continued giving of himself for the benefit of others until his death from emphysema in 1992.

Trivia: Though he was physically "wrong" as a dancer, Bob Fosse never let those limitations impede his artistic ambition. Molding his own imperfections into a distinct, sinuous style, Fosse left his mark on Broadway and brought an innovative dimension of sophistication and sensual energy to the movie musical in such films as Cabaret (1972) and All That Jazz (1979).Born in Chicago, Fosse began dance lessons at age nine. Though physically small and asthmatic, Fosse was a dance prodigy; by high school, he was already an experienced hoofer in Chicago's burlesque scene. After spending two years in the Navy, Fosse moved to New York in 1947. Finding work in the show Call Me Mister, Fosse and fellow dancer/first wife Mary Ann Niles began performing as a couple after Call Me Mister closed, with Fosse choreographing their routines. After meeting his second wife, dancer Joan McCracken, in 1950, Fosse began studying acting and dance at the American Theater Wing. With pigeon toes and slouching posture, Fosse hardly fit the dance ideal so he focused more on rhythm and style to make up for what he lacked physically. Spotted by a talent scout for MGM in 1952, Fosse headed to Hollywood to become a musical star. Though he displayed sufficient charm in Give a Girl a Break (1953) and The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953), Fosse became disillusioned with Hollywood. Before he left, however, Fosse was given the chance to choreograph his brief pas de deux with Carol Haney in the screen version of Kiss Me Kate (1953). Based on his 48 seconds of sleek, jazzy moves in Kate's "From This Moment On," Fosse was hired to choreograph Jerome Robbins and George Abbott's 1954 Broadway production The Pajama Game. After winning the Tony for choreography, Fosse re-teamed with Abbott and Robbins for 1955's Damn Yankees, devising a then-shocking "striptease" to "Whatever Lola Wants" for his eventual third wife, Gwen Verdon. Between these shows, Fosse returned to Hollywood to co-star in and choreograph My Sister Eileen (1955). His first feature-length stint designing dances for film, Fosse made the most of the widescreen, particularly in his ebullient "Challenge Dance." Fosse's gift for merging film and dance was confirmed with the hit adaptations of The Pajama Game (1957) and Damn Yankees (1958). While The Pajama Game's exuberant outdoor number "Once a Year Day" revealed Fosse's ability to stage a dance over expansive locations, "Steam Heat" became a primer for the Fosse vocabulary of knock-knees, forward-thrust hips, hats, and wrist-snaps. Damn Yankees gave Verdon her only starring turn in a movie musical; the snappy "Who's Got the Pain" mambo was Fosse's only screen appearance dancing with Verdon.Fosse, however, stuck with Broadway until the late '60s, choreographing and then directing eight musicals between 1956 and 1966, including New Girl in Town and Bells Are Ringing. After making his directorial debut with the Verdon hit Redhead in 1959, Fosse did double duties on the smash How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and the Federico Fellini-meets-Broadway hit Sweet Charity. Returning to films with the choreography for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), Fosse agreed to adapt Sweet Charity (1969) if he could direct. With former Pajama Game understudy Shirley MacLaine replacing Verdon as the optimistic hooker Charity, Fosse effectively translated such show stoppers as the rooftop jaunt "There's Got to Be Something Better Than This" and dancehall come-on "Hey Big Spender" to the CinemaScope screen. The dramatic parts, however, were not impressive and Sweet Charity failed.Fosse got another shot at movie-directing when a neophyte producer hired him to adapt Cabaret (1972). Shooting on location in Germany, restricting most of the songs and all of the dances to the cramped Kit Kat Club stage and hiring dancers who looked the part of decadent Berlinites, Fosse gave the film an authentically grungy atmosphere that enhanced the story's dark intimations of the impending Third Reich. Anchored by impressive performances from Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles and Joel Grey as the emcee, Cabaret became a critical and popular hit and garnered Oscars for Minnelli and Grey and Best Director for Fosse. 1972 became a historic year for Fosse when he also won the Best Director Tony for the sexy rock musical Pippin and a Best Director Emmy for the TV special Liza With a "Z" (1972).After co-choreographing and dancing in the film version of The Little Prince (1974), Fosse took on non-musical film drama with his next directorial effort, Lenny (1974). Starring Dustin Hoffman as trail-blazing foul-mouthed comedian Lenny Bruce and newcomer Valerie Perrine as his stripper wife, Lenny was a resolutely downbeat treatment of Bruce's rise and precipitous fall that earned accolades and Oscar nominations for Fosse and his stars. Fosse's work and personal habits, however, caught up with him before Lenny's release, when he suffered a heart attack and underwent open-heart surgery in late 1974. The following year, Chicago, Fosse's last musical collaboration with now-estranged wife Verdon, became yet another hit. Fosse turned his 1974 crisis into material for his next film, the Fellini-esque musical All That Jazz (1979). Starring Roy Scheider as a hard-living director-choreographer juggling women and work, All That Jazz amounted to Fosse's requiem for his own demise, complete with Jessica Lange as an ethereal angel of death, an elaborately imagined danse macabre, and onscreen open-heart surgery. Though some deemed All That Jazz self-indulgent, the Academy acknowledged Fosse's chutzpah with another Oscar nomination.His onscreen death a tad premature, Fosse returned to straight drama with Star 80 (1983). A sordid biopic chronicling the brief life of murdered Playmate Dorothy Stratten, Star 80 proved too unpleasant for popular acceptance. Returning to Broadway, Fosse unsuccessfully adapted the Italian comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) as Big Deal in 1985. Working until the end, Fosse passed away with appropriate theatricality when he was felled by a heart attack shortly after the curtain went up on his revival of Sweet Charity in 1987.

Trivia: Kurt Kasznar's stage career began in his native Vienna in 1931. Kasznar's star rose under the aegis of the great Max Reinhardt, who brought the actor to the U.S. in the mammoth 1937 production The Eternal Road. His better-known Broadway roles include Uncle Louis in The Happy Time (a characterization he repeated in the 1952 film version) and Max Detweiler in The Sound of Music. Kasznar also produced and directed Crazy With the Heat, and wrote First Cousin. Though he made an isolated silent movie appearance as a youngster, Kasznar's official film debut didn't come about until 1951's The Light Touch. His bombastic style was supremely suited to such film roles as Jacquot in Lili (1952) and Mr. Appopoulos in My Sister Eileen. His TV roles leaned towards the devious and sinister, notably his ongoing portrayal of Fitzhugh on the Irwin Allen extravaganza Land of the Giants (1968-70). Twice married, Kurt Kasznar's second wife was American actress Leora Dana.

Trivia: Actor/dancer Tommy Rall is, rather unfairly, something of the odd man out in the pantheon of MGM musical stars. In a way, it's almost understandable how this would occur -- he only appeared in three of the studio's productions. Two of those three, however -- Kiss Me Kate and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers -- were among MGM's biggest hits of the 1950s, and Rall was prominent in both, yet he is hardly ever mentioned in discussions of either film. His lack of recognition for his work in Kiss Me Kate, in which he does a dazzling rooftop dance (which looks even more impressive in the restored 3-D version of the film) set to Cole Porter's "Why Can't You Behave," is particularly frustrating -- true, Bob Fosse did some impressive choreography on "From This Moment On" from the same movie, and Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, and Ann Miller were never funnier or better -- but Rall also should be better noticed than he is.Born in Kansas City, MO, in 1929, but raised in Seattle, WA, Rall became a dancer by accident, starting at the age of four. His eyesight had been diagnosed as so poor that his mother, recognizing that any profession involving reading or study would be a problem, thought that dancing would eventually lead him to a career that was within reach. He also proved to be very good at it, and although his eyes ultimately became strong enough after surgery to permit him to study normally, he also discovered that he loved dancing and he never stopped the lessons. By age eight, he was performing in vaudeville in the area around Seattle, and had begun developing his acrobatic skills as well. He made a few tries at a child acting career without much success until the beginning of the 1940s, when Universal Pictures signed him up as part of an entire corps of young juvenile performers that the studio intended for a series of pleasant, low-budget musicals. Rall was cast as one of the Jivin' Jacks and Jills and Jills in Give Out, Sisters (1942), a breezy vehicle for the Andrews Sisters, Dan Dailey, and Grace McDonald. He got a small role (with screen credit this time) in another movie that same year, Get Hep to Love, starring Donald O'Connor and Gloria Jean, but then the company was broken up by the studio and most of the young contract players, including Rall, were released. During his early teens, Rall appeared uncredited in The North Star (1943) as a peasant dancer, and played a similar role in Song of Russia that same year. All the while, he continued studying dance with Adolf Bohm, David Lichine, and Bronislava Nijinska, all of whom facilitated Rall's conversion to the cause of ballet. On Lichine's recommendation, the 14-year-old Rall joined the Ballet Theater company, a touring ensemble, in 1944. He spent three and a half years becoming a seasoned professional while still in his teens, and dancing principal roles. By 1947, he'd gone as far as he could with the company and, for the moment, with ballet, and was ready to make the jump to theatrical work. He made his debut in a West Coast revival of Louisiana Purchase. From there, it was a quick leap to Broadway and small featured spots in Look Ma, I'm Dancing (1948) and Small Wonder, which led to top dancing roles Miss Liberty (1949-1950) and Call Me Madam (1950-1951). Those Broadway performances later payed serious dividends when they were recalled by Gene Kelly, while the latter was preparing his film Invitation to the Dance -- Kelly remembered seeing Rall's work and put him into the most personal of all the films he made at MGM. Meanwhile, television beckoned in the early '50s as Rall joined the production team of The Faye Emerson Show as the program's choreographer. Then it was back to Hollywood, where he put his athletic ability as well as his dancing and acting skills to use in Kiss Me Kate, in the role of Bill Calhoun, the would-be paramour of Ann Miller's showgirl Lois Lane, whose gambling streak and IOUs signed in the name of the show's star, Fred Graham, helps propel the plot. He also got to do that delightful rooftop dance with Miller, one great highlight of a movie filled with them. Rall was also part of the unexpected success of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, playing Frank Pontipee. Roles in the musical My Sister Eileen and The Second Greatest Sex followed, along with his portrayal of the Flashy Boyfriend in Invitation to the Dance. He also played straight acting roles on occasion, as in Universal's production of Walk the Proud Land, a fact-based Western starring Audie Murphy, in which Rall portrayed a Native American. He was in one of Danny Kaye's more fondly remembered later successes, Merry Andrew, and then Broadway beckoned again in Jose Ferrer's production of Juno, a musical by Marc Blitzstein and Joseph Stein (based on Sean O'Casey's play Juno and the Paycock), in which Rall worked in a cast that included Shirley Booth, Melvyn Douglas, Jean Stapleton, and Sada Thompson. He was busy on Broadway during the 1960s, returning to films for an uncredited appearance (as the Prince in the parody of Swan Lake) in Funny Girl (1968). Rall's next screen appearance was in Pennies From Heaven (1981), and he followed this with That's Dancing (1985) and Dancers (1987), in which he was credited as Thomas Rall. In 1997, he also showed up out of character in the documentary The Making of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Trivia: Though only 35 when she launched her movie career in 1941, American actress Barbara Brown was almost immediately typed in maternal roles. Brown went on to play Joan Leslie's strict mother in Hollywood Canteen (1944), Ann Blyth's snooty mother-in-law in Mildred Pierce (1945), reproving Mrs. Latham in Monogram's Henry series (with Walter Catlett and Raymond Walburn) and haughty Mrs. Elizabeth Parker in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle films. She broke away from her standard characterization as girl's-school dean (and second-reel murder victim) Miss Keyes in The Falcon and the Co-Eds (1943). Barbara Brown was still essaying movie moms at the time of her retirement in 1955.

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: Born in Puerto Rico, actor Alberto Morin received his education in France. While in that country he worked briefly for Pathe Freres, a major film distribution firm, then studied theatre at the Escuela de Mimica in Mexico. Upon the advent of talking pictures, Morin was signed by Fox Pictures to make Spanish-language films for the South American market. He remained in Hollywood as a character actor, seldom getting much of a part but nearly always making an impression in his few seconds of screen time. Morin also worked steadily in radio and on such TV weeklies as Dobie Gillis and Mr. Roberts, sometimes billed as Albert Morin. During his five decades in Hollywood, Alberto Morin contributed uncredited performances in several of Tinseltown's most laudable achievements: he played Rene Picard in the Bazaar sequence in Gone With the Wind (1939), was a French military officer at Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca (1942), and showed up as a boat skipper in Key Largo (1947).

Trivia: Pixieish stage and screen soubrette Queenie Smith was a Broadway favorite in the 1920s, most notably as star of the 1925 George Gershwin musical Tip Toes (1925). She came to films in the mid-1930s, playing virtually the same role in two period musicals, the 1935 Bing Crosby/W.C. Fields concoction Mississippi and the 1936 version of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's Show Boat. As her youthful rambunctiousness matured into middle-aged feistiness, Queenie was seen in dozens of tiny roles, usually cast as a nosy neighbor, landlady, housekeeper or (in later years) retirement-home resident. In 1970, she and nonagenarian actor Burt Mustin were teamed as a long-married couple on the TV comedy-sketch series The Funny Side. One of the last and best of Queenie Smith's film roles was the scatological scrabble player in the 1978 Goldie Hawn-Chevy Chase vehicle Foul Play (1978).

Trivia: Very early in his stage career, Richard Deacon was advised by Helen Hayes to abandon all hopes of becoming a leading man: instead, she encouraged him to aggressively pursue a career as a character actor. Tall, bald, bespectacled and bass-voiced since high school, Deacon heeded Ms. Hayes' advice, and managed to survive in show business far longer than many of the "perfect" leading men who were his contemporaries. Usually cast as a glaring sourpuss or humorless bureaucrat, Deacon was a valuable and highly regarded supporting-cast commodity in such films as Desiree (1954), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Kiss Them For Me (1957), The Young Philadelphians (1959) and The King's Pirate (1967), among many others. Virtually every major star who worked with Deacon took time out to compliment him on his skills: among his biggest admirers were Lou Costello, Jack Benny and Cary Grant. Even busier on television than in films, Richard Deacon had the distinction of appearing regularly on two concurrently produced sitcoms of the early 1960s: he was pompous suburbanite Fred Rutherford on Leave It to Beaver, and the long-suffering Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Deacon also co-starred as Kaye Ballard's husband on the weekly TV comedy The Mothers-in-Law (1968), and enjoyed a rare leading role on the 1964 Twilight Zone installment "The Brain Center at Whipples." In his last decade, Richard Deacon hosted a TV program on microwave cookery, and published a companion book on the subject.

Trivia: Horace McMahon dabbled in professional and semi-professional acting while attending Fordham University Law School, continuing to do so while holding down a day job as a newspaper reporter. He made acting his full-time vocation after his first Broadway appearance in 1931. In films from 1937, the growly, jowly MacMahon was initially typed in gangster roles. After scoring a personal success as Lieutenant Monaghan in the 1949 Broadway play Detective Story, MacMahon repeated the role in the 1951 film version -- and thereafter was pigeonholed in "cop" roles. Before beginning his five-year (1958-63) tenure as Lieutenant Mike Parker on the TV series The Naked City, MacMahon had been a semi-regular on Martin Kane (1950, as the newsstand owner who stocked nothing but the sponsor's cigarette) and Make Room for Daddy (1953, as Danny Thomas' agent). His last weekly TV assignment was as Hank McClure, police contact for public relations man Craig Stevens, in the short-lived Mr. Broadway. Having been born near Norwalk, Connecticut, Horace McMahon spent his retirement years in that community with his wife, former actress Louise Campbell.