Trivia: The British actress, comedienne, singer and dancer Julie Andrews stakes a claim to fame for having one of the single most astonishing voices (four octaves!) of any entertainer alive. Yet the breadth of this raw ability is often hugely obscured by Andrews's milquetoast image and onscreen persona. Thus, in the late '60s, Andrews - who began her film career rooted firmly in family-oriented material - traveled far out of her way to expand her dramatic repertoire, with decidedly mixed results. A music-hall favorite since childhood, Andrews spent the war years dodging Nazi bombs and bowing to the plaudits of her fans. Thanks to her own talents and the persistence of her vaudevillian parents, Andrews maintained her career momentum with appearances in such extravaganzas as 1947's Starlight Roof Revue. It was in the role of a 1920s flapper in Sandy Wilson's satire The Boy Friend (1953) that brought Andrews to Broadway; and few could resist the attractively angular young miss warbling such deliberately sappy lyrics as "I Could Be Happy With You/If You Could Be Happy With Me." Following a live-TV performance of High Tor, Andrews regaled American audiences in the star-making role of cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle in the 1956 Broadway blockbuster My Fair Lady. The oft-told backstage story of this musical classic was enough to dissuade anyone from thinking that Andrews was an overnight success, as producer Moss Hart mercilessly drilled her for 48 hours to help her get her lines, songs and dialect in proper working order. In 1957, Andrews again enchanted TV audiences in the title role of Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical adaptation of Cinderella. Later, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe -- also the composers of My Fair Lady -- developed the role of Guinevere in their 1960 musical Camelot with Andrews in mind, and the result was another Broadway triumph, albeit not as profitable as Fair Lady. Although a proven favorite with American audiences thanks to her frequent TV variety show appearances (notably a memorable 1962 teaming with Carol Burnett), Andrews did not make a motion picture until 1964. As Mary Poppins, Andrews not only headlined one of Walt Disney's all-time biggest moneymakers, but also won an Oscar -- sweet compensation for having lost the Eliza role to Audrey Hepburn for the adaptation of My Fair Lady. Andrews hoped that Mary Poppins would not type her in "goody-goody" parts, and, to that end, accepted a decidedly mature role as James Garner's love interest in The Americanization of Emily (1964). However, Andrews' next film, The Sound of Music (1965) effectively locked her into sweetness and light parts in the minds of moviegoers. On the strength of the success of Music, Andrews was signed to numerous Hollywood projects, but her stardom had peaked.Perhaps recognizing this, Andrews started to branch out fairly aggressively by the late '60s, with such "adult-oriented" pictures as Alfred Hitchcock's espionage thriller Torn Curtain. That film, and others (Hawaii, Star!) all flopped. In the late '60s, Andrews fell in love with and married the then white-hot American director Blake Edwards; her decision to collaborate with Edwards on a professional level, to boot, waxed incredibly strategic. Today, many view Edwards in a negative light for cranking out moronic studio fodder such as A Fine Mess and Sunset). In 1969, however, he sat among Hollywood's creme-de-la-creme, notorious for crafting mature genre pictures for adult audiences (The Days of Wine and Roses, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Experiment in Fear and sophisticated slapstick comedies unafraid to take chances (the Pink Panther series, The Party). By marrying Edwards and aligning herself with him creatively, then, Andrews was also consciously or unconsciously bucking to change her image. Unfortunately, the two began at a low ebb to end all low ebbs. The WWI musical farce Darling Lili (1970) featured Rock Hudson, electric musical numbers, stunning dogfight sequences, and - significantly - a semi-erotic striptease number by Andrews. Apparently audiences didn't buy this sort of behavior coming from Mary Poppins: the film tanked at the box office, as did the spy thriller The Tamarind Seed, also starring Andrews.Aside from a couple of televised musical specials, Andrews stuck with her husband for each successive film - for better or worse, as they say. Their next collaborations arrived in the late '70s and early '80s, first with the smash Dudley Moore sex farce '10' (1979) and then with the Hollywood satire S.O.B. (1981). In the former, Andrews took a backseat to sexy bombshell Bo Derek, who catches the infatuation of Moore but delivered a finely-modulated comic performance nonetheless; the latter - an unapologetically 'R' rated comedy about a nutty director who attempts to turn a family-friendly stinker into a porno musical -- exposed a topless Andrews to the world for the first time. This rank, cynical and angry "satire" represented the couple's creative nadir; one critic rightly pointed out that Andrews could have used it as grounds for divorce. The 1982 transvestite musical Victor/Victoria (with Andrews in the lead) fared better; it was followed by Edwards's 1983 Truffaut remake, The Man Who Loved Women (with Andrews as the lover of sculptor Burt Reynolds). Andrews's attempts at image-extending here are obvious in each case; the individual films have various strengths and weaknesses, but - love 'em or hate 'em -- they broadened the appeal of Andrews only slightly - with many perceiving her as either an onscreen accessory to her husband or as an okay straight man in mediocre romantic comedies. The couple fared a thousand times better with the excellent mid-life crisis comedy-drama That's Life! (1986), starring Andrews and Jack Lemmon. Two esteemed dramatic roles sans Edwards - that of a frustrated multiple sclerosis victim in Duet for One (1986), and that of a grieving mother of an AIDS victim in Our Sons (1991) - did what the prior films were supposed to have done: they secured Andrews's reputation as an actress of astonishing versatility. Yet, as Andrews aged, she ironically began to segue back into the types of roles that originally brought her infamy, with a series of sugar-coated, grandmotherly parts in family-friendly pictures. Notably, she co-starred in the first two installments of The Princess Diaries as Queen Clarisse Rinaldi, a European monarch of a tiny duchy, who tutors her "hip" teen granddaughter (Anne Hathaway) in the ways of regality. Andrews also used her polished and cultured British diction to great advantage by voicing Queen Lillian in the second and third and fourth installments of Dreamworks's popular, CG-animated Shrek series: Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, and Shrek Forever After. She also maintained her status as a family-film icon by narrating Enchanted, voicing Gru's mother in the animated Despicable Me, and playing opposite The Rock in Tooth Fairy.

Trivia: Born in Missouri, entertainer Dick Van Dyke was raised in Danville, Illinois, where repeated viewings of Laurel & Hardy comedies at his local movie palace inspired him to go into show business. Active in high school and community plays in his teens, Van Dyke briefly put his theatrical aspirations aside upon reaching college age. He toyed with the idea of becoming a Presbyterian minister; then, after serving in the Air Force during World War II, opened up a Danville advertising agency. When this venture failed, it was back to show biz, first as a radio announcer for local station WDAN, and later as half of a record-pantomime act called The Merry Mutes (the other half was a fellow named Philip Erickson). While hosting a TV morning show in New Orleans, Van Dyke was signed to a contract by the CBS network. He spent most of his time subbing for other CBS personalities and emceeing such forgotten endeavors as Cartoon Theatre. After making his acting debut as a hayseed baseball player on The Phil Silvers Show, Van Dyke left CBS to free-lance. He hosted a few TV game shows before his career breakthrough as co-star of the 1959 Broadway review The Girls Against the Boys. The following year, he starred in the musical comedy Bye Bye Birdie, winning a Tony Award for his portrayal of mother-dominated songwriter Albert Peterson (it would be his last Broadway show until the short-lived 1980 revival of The Music Man). In 1961, he was cast as comedy writer Rob Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show, which after a shaky start lasted five seasons and earned its star three Emmies.He made his movie bow in the 1963 filmization of Bye Bye Birdie, then entered into a flexible arrangement with Walt Disney Studios. His best known films from that era include Mary Poppins (1964), Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN and The Comic, in which he played an amalgam of several self-destructive silent movie comedians. His TV specials remained popular in the ratings, and it was this fact that led to the debut of The New Dick Van Dyke Show in 1971. Despite the creative input of the earlier Dick Van Dyke Show's maven Carl Reiner, the later series never caught on, and petered out after three seasons. A chronic "people pleaser," Van Dyke was loath to display anger or frustration around his co-workers or fans, so he began taking solace in liquor; by 1972, he had become a full-fledged alcoholic. Rather than lie to his admirers or himself any longer, he underwent treatment and publicly admitted his alcoholism -- one of the first major TV stars ever to do so. Van Dyke's public confession did little to hurt his "nice guy" public image, and, now fully and permanently sober, he continued to be sought out for guest-star assignments and talk shows. In 1974, he starred in the TV movie The Morning After, playing an ad executive who destroys his reputation, his marriage and his life thanks to booze. After that Van Dyke, further proved his versatility when he began accepting villainous roles, ranging from a cold-blooded wife murderer in a 1975 Columbo episode to the corrupt district attorney in the 1990 film Dick Tracy. He also made several stabs at returning to weekly television, none of which panned out--until 1993, when he starred as Dr. Mark Sloan in the popular mystery series Diagnosis Murder. He made a few more movie appearances after Diagnosis Murder came to an end, most notably as a retired security guard in the hit family film Night at the Museum. As gifted at writing and illustrating as he is at singing, dancing and clowning, Van Dyke has penned two books, Faith, Hope and Hilarity and Those Funny Kids. From 1992 to 1994, he served as chairman of the Nickelodeon cable service, which was then sweeping the ratings by running Dick Van Dyke Show reruns in prime time. Van Dyke is the brother of award-winning TV personality Jerry Van Dyke, and the father of actor Barry Van Dyke.

Trivia: Throaty-voiced, kittenish leading lady Glynis Johns was the daughter of British stage actor Mervyn Johns; she was born while her father and concert-pianist mother were on a tour of South Africa. Enrolled in the London ballet school at age 6, Johns had by age 10 progressed to the point that she was certified to teach ballet. At 12, she made her stage debut in the role of Napoleon's daughter in Saint Helena; at 13, she was cast in the pivotal role of the spiteful schoolgirl in the London production of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour. This led to her first film, 1937's South Riding, in which she played another petulant, foot-stamping adolescent. Johns graduated to coquettish leading roles in the 1940s, most famously as the alluring mermaid in Miranda (1946). Her best-known Hollywood assignments include the roles of Maid Jean in Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1956) and the suffragette Mrs. Banks in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964) (Johns was the only cast member to have the foresight to demand a portion of the royalties for the Poppins soundtrack record). In 1963, she starred in Glynis, a lukewarm TV comedy/mystery series. Eight years later, she won a Tony award for her performance in Broadway's A Little Night Music. Still active into the 1990s, Glynis Johns was recently seen as a belligerent in-law in The Ref (1994) and as a deliciously dotty aunt in While You Were Sleeping (1995).

Trivia: With his military bearing and regulation-cut mustache, actor David Tomlinson looked as though he'd just stepped out of a recruiting poster for the British army. A stage actor from 1935, Tomlinson at first specialized in "silly ass" roles, but his wartime service with the RAF apparently instilled in him a permanent air of authority that he was unable to shrug off for his film appearances. Even so, Tomlinson liked nothing better than to undercut his dignified demeanor in flustered comedy roles, invariably sputtering such expletives as "My word!," "I say!," and "What the deuce!" David Tomlinson is most fondly remembered for his '60s work at the Walt Disney studios, beginning with his Henry Higgins-ish portrayal of Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins (1964).

Trivia: Born Isaiah Edward Leopold, Wynn ran away from home at 15 to work as a utility boy for a stage company, with which he also acted. The company failed and he returned home. Shortly thereafter, he moved to New York, soon becoming a vaudeville comic headliner. In 1914, he began appearing with the Ziegfeld Follies, billed as the Perfect Fool; meanwhile, he got into a widely publicized feud with another Ziegfeld star, W.C. Fields. After organizing an actors' strike in 1919, he was boycotted by the Shuberts. At the height of his popularity as a Broadway comic star, he got around the boycott by writing and producing his own shows, which were both critical and popular successes. Having appeared in a few films, in the '30s he increased his popularity on radio as the Texaco Fire Chief. At the end of the '30s, several of his business ventures collapsed, including a radio chain; he suffered a nervous breakdown and his career seemed over. He bounced back on Broadway in the '40s. In 1949, he won the first TV Emmy Award as Best Actor in a Series. Out of work in the '50s, when his comedy style had become dated, he was encouraged by his son -- actor Keenan Wynn -- to launch a new career as a film actor. From 1957 to 1967, he was busy onscreen as a dramatic character actor, and for his work in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. He also appeared in TV dramas.

Trivia: A descendant of British revolutionary war officer Henry Clinton, Hermione Baddeley was an actress from the age of six; she made her London stage debut in 1918, and her first film, A Daughter in Revolt, in 1926. An ingenue for many years, Hermione began receiving more substantial roles as she approached middle age; among her best assignments were the stage and film versions of Brighton Rock. Her first Broadway play was 1960's The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Any More, accepting her leading role on the personal invitation of the production's playwright, Tennessee Williams. Unlike her sister Angela Baddeley, who became internationally known for her portrayal of Mrs. Bridges in the BBC TV production Upstairs Downstairs, Hermione Baddeley resisted series television--at least until she was persuaded by producer Norman Lear to tackle the role of acidulous housekeeper Mrs. Naugatuck on the 1970s American sitcom Maude.

Trivia: Formidable American character actress Reta Shaw was the daughter of a New England orchestra leader. Educated in virtually all forms of the arts except acting, Shaw took a series of musical and "civilian" jobs before appearing in her first play, the 1946 dud It Takes Two. She went on to character roles in such major Broadway musicals as Annie Get Your Gun and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Shaw was one of the few members of the original Broadway cast of Picnic to be invited to appear in the 1956 film version. The hefty Ms. Shaw was subsequently shown to good advantage as a pajama factory employee in the 1957 film musical The Pajama Game (again repeating her stage role), and in dozens of smaller but still showy roles, such as Mrs. Brill the maid in 1964's Mary Poppins. From 1968 through 1970, Reta Shaw was seen on a weekly basis as housekeeper Martha Grant on the TV sitcom version of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

Trivia: Actress Karen Dotrice made her screen debut at the age of eight playing a young Scottish girl who grieves over her beloved cat in the Disney adaptation of Paul Gallico's Thomasina (1963). She went on to appear in more Disney films through the decade and then disappeared until 1977 when she played her first adult role in Joseph Andrews (1977). Her last film appearance came the following year with a starring role in The Thirty Nine Steps.

Trivia: Eccentric, high-voiced British comedienne/actress Elsa Lanchester started her career as a modern dancer, appearing with Isadora Duncan. Lanchester can be seen bringing unique and usually humorous interpretations to roles in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), opposite husband Charles Laughton; The Bride of Frankenstein (1934), where she appears both as a subdued Mary Shelley and a hissing bride; David Copperfield and Naughty Marietta (both 1935); Tales of Manhattan (1942) and Forever and a Day (1943), both with Laughton; Lassie Come Home (1943), in which she is unusually subdued as the mother; The Bishop's Wife (1947); The Inspector General and The Secret Garden (1949); and Come to the Stable (1949), for which she was nominated for an Oscar. She and Laughton are riotous together in Witness for the Prosecution (1957), for which she was also Oscar-nominated, and she also appeared in Bell, Book and Candle (1958) and the Disney films Mary Poppins (1964), as the departing nanny Katie Nanna, and in That Darn Cat (1965). One of her best late performances was in Murder by Death (1976). Lanchester was also an actress at London's Old Vic, an outlandish singer, and a nightclub performer; she co-starred on The John Forsythe Show (1965-66), and was a regular on Nanny and the Professor in 1971.

Trivia: Of the many candidates for the throne of "Hollywood's favorite butler," Brighton-born Arthur Treacher was the undisputed victor. The son of a British lawyer, the tall, hook-nosed Treacher did not settle upon an acting career until he was 25, after serving in WWI. Starting out as a chorus "boy," Treacher rose to popularity as a musical comedy performer. He came to America in 1928 while he was appearing in a revue titled Great Temptations. Entering films in 1933, Treacher quickly established himself in butler or servant roles, notably in several Shirley Temple films. He was awarded top-billing in Thank You, Jeeves (1936) and Step Lively, Jeeves (1937), both based on the gentleman's-gentleman character created by P.G. Wodehouse. Remaining active on Broadway, Treacher was prominently billed in such stage productions as Cole Porter's Panama Hattie and the 1944 revival of The Ziegfeld Follies. After several years away from Hollywood, Treacher returned in 1964 to portray a constable in Disney's Mary Poppins, which turned out to be his final film. Arthur Treacher enjoyed a latter-day popularity in the 1960s as the acerbic sidekick of TV talk show host Merv Griffin, and through the franchising of his name and image for such business concerns as Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips and the Call Arthur Treacher Service System (a household help agency).

Trivia: British actor Reginald Owen was a graduate of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his stage bow in 1905, remaining a highly-regarded leading man in London for nearly two decades before traversing the Atlantic to make his Broadway premiere in The Swan. His film career commenced with The Letter (1929), and for the next forty years Owen was one of Hollywood's favorite Englishmen, playing everything from elegant aristocrats to seedy villains. Modern viewers are treated to Owen at his hammy best each Christmas when local TV stations run MGM's 1938 version of The Christmas Carol. As Ebeneezer Scrooge, Owen was a last-minute replacement for an ailing Lionel Barrymore, but no one in the audience felt the loss as they watched Owen go through his lovably cantankerous paces. Reginald Owen's film career flourished into the 1960s and 1970s. He was particularly amusing and appropriately bombastic as Admiral Boom, the cannon-happy eccentric neighbor in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964).

Trivia: American actress Jane Darwell was the daughter of a Missouri railroad executive. Despite her father's disapproval, she spent most of her youth acting in circuses, opera troupes and stock companies, making her film debut in 1912. Even in her early thirties, Darwell specialized in formidable "grande dame" roles, usually society matrons or strict maiden aunts. Making an easy transition to talking pictures, Darwell worked primarily in small character parts (notably as governesses and housekeepers in the films of Shirley Temple) until 1939, when her role as the James Brothers' mother in Jesse James began a new career direction--now she was most often cast as indomitable frontierswomen, unbending in the face of hardship and adversity. It was this quality that led Darwell to be cast in her favorite role as Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), for which she won an Oscar. Darwell continued to work until illness crept upon her in the late 1950s. Even so, Darwell managed to essay a handful of memorable parts on TV and in movies into the 1960s; her last film role was as the "Bird Woman" in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964).

Trivia: British actor Arthur Malet came into prominence in the 1960s, playing old codgers while still relatively young. As banker Dawes Jr. in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964), he shared a funny musical moment with Dick Van Dyke; later on, he appeared on Van Dyke's television show, playing a doddering hotel plumber in the memorable episode wherein Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) gets her foot stuck in a bathtub faucet. Malet went on to play a village elder in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974), and was frequently seen as butlers in both films (Heaven Can Wait) and TV (Dallas, Easy Street). And in the otherwise ponderous Peter Pan sequel Hook (1991), Arthur Malet has a delightful scene in which, as the aged "Lost Boy" Tootles, he regains his childhood flying skills and circles merrily around Big Ben.

Trivia: Character actress Marjorie Eaton came to films in middle age. From 1946 on, she appeared onscreen in such films as Anna and the King of Siam (1946), The Time of Their Lives (1946), Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and Mary Poppins (1964), usually cast as domestics. She also did some voiceover work in the Disney feature-length cartoons of the 1950s and 1960s. Marjorie Eaton died shortly after appearing in her last film, 1986's Crackers.

Trivia: Australian actress Marjorie Bennett made her first film appearances in the pre-World War I years at the suggestion of her sister, silent film star Enid Bennett. Marjorie wasn't yet under the spell of the acting bug, so she abandoned performing for several years, re-emerging as a stage rather than screen actress. She returned to films in the late 1940s as a character player, notably in Charles Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Limelight (1952). A prolific film and TV performer of the 1950s and 1960s, Marjorie Bennett was usually cast as huffy society matrons and haughty domestics; her massive bulk and easily outraged demeanor made her a perfect straight woman for such iconoclastic comedians as Red Skelton and the Three Stooges.

Trivia: Moderately successful as a leading man in British films from 1931 through 1934, Lester Matthews moved to the U.S. in the company of his then-wife, actress Anne Grey. Though Grey faded from view after a handful of Hollywood pictures (Break of Hearts [35] and Bonnie Scotland [35] among them), Matthews remained in Tinseltown until his retirement in 1968. At first, his roles were substantial, notably his romantic-lead stints in the Karloff/Lugosi nightmare-inducer The Raven (35) and the thoughtful sci-fier Werewolf of London (35), which starred Henry Hull in the title role. Thereafter, Matthews was consigned to supporting roles, often as British travel agents, bankers, solicitors, company clerks and military officers. Active in films, radio and television throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Lester Matthews was last seen in the Julie Andrews musical Star (1968).

Trivia: Formidable stage leading lady Doris Lloyd transferred her activities from British repertory to Hollywood in 1925. She was prominently cast as an alluring spy in George Arliss' first talkie Disraeli (1929); one year later, at the tender age of 30, she was seen as the matronly Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez in Charley's Aunt. Swinging back to younger roles in 1933, Lloyd was cast as the tragic Nancy Sykes in the Dickie Moore version of Oliver Twist. By the late 1930s, Lloyd had settled into middle-aged character roles, most often as a domestic or dowager. Doris Lloyd remained active until 1967, with substantial roles in such films as The Time Machine (1960) and The Sound of Music (1965).

Trivia: In his autobiography The Moon's a Balloon, David Niven recalled the kindnesses extended to him by Hollywood's dress extras during Niven's formative acting years. Singled out for special praise was a dignified, frequently bearded gentleman, deferentially referred to as "The Major" by his fellow extras. This worthy could be nobody other than the prolific Major Sam Harris, who worked in films from the dawn of the talkie era until 1964. Almost never afforded billing or even dialogue (a rare exception was his third-billed role in the 1937 John Wayne adventure I Cover the War), Harris was nonetheless instantly recognizable whenever he appeared. His output included several of John Ford's efforts of the 1940s and 1950s. Drawing upon his extensive military experience, Major Sam Harris showed up in most of the "British India" pictures of the 1930s, and served as technical advisor for Warners' Charge of the Light Brigade (1935).

Trivia: The background of Irish-born comic actor J. Pat O'Malley has frequently been misreported in source books because his credits have been confused with those of silent film star Pat O'Malley. J. Pat started out in the British musical halls, then came to the U.S. at the outbreak of WWII. Achieving radio fame for his versatile voicework, O'Malley carried over this talent into the world of animated cartoons, providing a multitude of vocal characterizations in such Disney cartoon features as Alice in Wonderland (1951) and 101 Dalmatians (1961), among others. The portly, leprechaunish O'Malley essayed on-camera character parts in films like Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and Mary Poppins (1965). He was a near-habitual TV guest star, with appearances in several fondly remembered Twilight Zone episodes; he also worked extensively on Broadway. J. Pat O'Malley had regular roles on the TV sitcoms Wendy and Me (1964) and A Touch of Grace (1973).