Trivia: Arguably the most popular -- and certainly the busiest -- movie leading man in Hollywood history, John Wayne entered the film business while working as a laborer on the Fox lot during summer vacations from U.S.C., which he attended on a football scholarship. He met and was befriended by John Ford, a young director who was beginning to make a name for himself in action films, comedies, and dramas. Wayne was cast in small roles in Ford's late-'20s films, occasionally under the name Duke Morrison. It was Ford who recommended Wayne to director Raoul Walsh for the male lead in the 1930 epic Western The Big Trail, and, although it was a failure at the box office, the movie showed Wayne's potential as a leading man. During the next nine years, be busied himself in a multitude of B-Westerns and serials -- most notably Shadow of the Eagle and The Three Mesquiteers series -- in between occasional bit parts in larger features such as Warner Bros.' Baby Face, starring Barbara Stanwyck. But it was in action roles that Wayne excelled, exuding a warm and imposing manliness onscreen to which both men and women could respond. In 1939, Ford cast Wayne as the Ringo Kid in the adventure Stagecoach, a brilliant Western of modest scale but tremendous power (and incalculable importance to the genre), and the actor finally showed what he could do. Wayne nearly stole a picture filled with Oscar-caliber performances, and his career was made. He starred in most of Ford's subsequent major films, whether Westerns (Fort Apache [1948], She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949], Rio Grande [1950], The Searchers [1956]); war pictures (They Were Expendable [1945]); or serious dramas (The Quiet Man [1952], in which Wayne also directed some of the action sequences). He also starred in numerous movies for other directors, including several extremely popular World War II thrillers (Flying Tigers [1942], Back to Bataan [1945], Fighting Seabees [1944], Sands of Iwo Jima [1949]); costume action films (Reap the Wild Wind [1942], Wake of the Red Witch [1949]); and Westerns (Red River [1948]). His box-office popularity rose steadily through the 1940s, and by the beginning of the 1950s he'd also begun producing movies through his company Wayne-Fellowes, later Batjac, in association with his sons Michael and Patrick (who also became an actor). Most of these films were extremely successful, and included such titles as Angel and the Badman (1947), Island in the Sky (1953), The High and the Mighty (1954), and Hondo (1953). The 1958 Western Rio Bravo, directed by Howard Hawks, proved so popular that it was remade by Hawks and Wayne twice, once as El Dorado and later as Rio Lobo. At the end of the 1950s, Wayne began taking on bigger films, most notably The Alamo (1960), which he produced and directed, as well as starred in. It was well received but had to be cut to sustain any box-office success (the film was restored to full length in 1992). During the early '60s, concerned over the growing liberal slant in American politics, Wayne emerged as a spokesman for conservative causes, especially support for America's role in Vietnam, which put him at odds with a new generation of journalists and film critics. Coupled with his advancing age, and a seeming tendency to overact, he became a target for liberals and leftists. However, his movies remained popular. McLintock!, which, despite well-articulated statements against racism and the mistreatment of Native Americans, and in support of environmentalism, seemed to confirm the left's worst fears, but also earned more than ten million dollars and made the list of top-grossing films of 1963-1964. Virtually all of his subsequent movies, including the pro-Vietnam War drama The Green Berets (1968), were very popular with audiences, but not with critics. Further controversy erupted with the release of The Cowboys, which outraged liberals with its seeming justification of violence as a solution to lawlessness, but it was successful enough to generate a short-lived television series. Amid all of the shouting and agonizing over his politics, Wayne won an Oscar for his role as marshal Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, a part that he later reprised in a sequel. Wayne weathered the Vietnam War, but, by then, time had become his enemy. His action films saw him working alongside increasingly younger co-stars, and the decline in popularity of the Western ended up putting him into awkward contemporary action films like McQ (1974). Following his final film, The Shootist (1976) -- possibly his best Western since The Searchers -- the news that Wayne was stricken ill with cancer (which eventually took his life in 1979) wiped the slate clean, and his support for the Panama Canal Treaty at the end of the 1970s belatedly made him a hero for the left. Wayne finished his life honored by the film community, the U.S. Congress, and the American people as had no actor before or since. He remains among the most popular actors of his generation, as evidenced by the continual rereleases of his films on home video.

Trivia: The voluptuous Sophia Loren was among the most successful international stars of the postwar era; not only did she rise to fame as a sex symbol, but she also won a measure of critical acclaim rarely afforded most of her foreign-born contemporaries. Born Sofia Scicolone in Rome on September 20, 1934, she and her single mother lived in abject poverty in the war-torn slums of Naples. At the age of 14, she began entering area beauty contests, later becoming a model and appearing in a number of uncredited bit parts in films. After winning a beauty contest in Rome, Loren was signed to a film contract by producer Carlo Ponti, who began grooming her for stardom by recruiting drama coaches and casting her in small movie roles, including an appearance in the 1951 smash Anna, under the name "Sofia Lazzaro." For 1952's La Favorita, her first larger role, Ponti changed her name to Sophia Loren, and with the following year's La Tratta Delle Bianche, she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago.By the mid-'50s, Loren was a star in Italy as well as a major sex symbol, but with the exception of 1955's Attila Flagello di Dio, co-starring Anthony Quinn, few of her pictures were distributed internationally. That changed with Vittorio de Sica's L'Oro di Napoli, which was recut and dubbed for foreign sale, resulting in poor reviews. Loren, however, was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell. As a result, 1955's La Donna del Fiume was distributed in both the U.S. and Britain, as were a number of other subsequent projects. Eventually, Loren emerged as an international star, and Ponti soon declared her ready for Hollywood. She moved tentatively into the English-language market with a pair of films shot in Europe, 1957's Boy on a Dolphin (in which she appeared opposite Alan Ladd) and The Pride and the Passion (starring Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant).In 1957, Loren and Ponti were wed in Mexico. Their marriage was a national scandal in the predominantly Catholic Italy because Ponti had already been married once before. A series of legal complications ensued -- one prominent Italian Catholic magazine even instructed readers to boycott Loren's movies. In the meantime, Ponti orchestrated with Paramount a four-film contract for Loren's services, beginning with 1958's Desire Under the Elms. In Hollywood, her acting skills blossomed, and she won Best Actress honors at the 1959 Venice Film Festival for her work in Martin Ritt's drama The Black Orchid. However, she proved unable to draw audiences, a situation which her next film, George Cukor's idiosyncratic Western Heller in Pink Tights, failed to remedy. The 1960 romantic comedy It Started in Naples (with Clark Gable) was Loren's commercial breakthrough, but Paramount had lost faith in her star power and cut her loose. She next traveled to Britain to film Anthony Asquith's The Millionairess. Upon returning to Italy, Loren reunited with de Sica in 1961's La Ciociara, a wartime drama in which she starred as a widowed mother caught in a love triangle with her teen daughter (Eleanora Brown) and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Climaxed by a brutal rape scene, the film won widespread acclaim, and Loren's gut-wrenching performance earned her an Academy Award, the first foreign-language performer to win the Best Actress prize. She was also so honored at the Cannes Film Festival. She next shot 1961's El Cid in Spain with Charlton Heston, followed by the de Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70. On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with 1963's Five Miles to Midnight, followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire. Again her success was minimal, and she went back to the relative comforts of the Italian film industry for Ieri, Oggi, Domani and Matrimonio all'Italiana, both directed by de Sica and both co-starring Marcello Mastroianni. In 1965, Ponti signed a production deal with MGM; a small role for Loren in Operation Crossbow and a larger part in Lady L were the results, followed by a series of films which cast her variously as a Jewish wife (1966's Judith), an Arab mistress (1966's Arabesque), and a former Russian prostitute (A Countess From Hong Kong). None of these projects were well received, however, and after the failure of the fairy tale C'era una Volta and Questi Fantasmi, the Ponti/MGM deal ended unceremoniously. Despite her recent lack of success, Loren nevertheless remained a major talent, and in 1969 she even won a Golden Globe award as the world's most popular female star. Still, her popularity was not reflected by her box-office totals; projects like de Sica's 1970 picture I Girasoli and 1971's La Moglie del Prete performed well in Italy but played disastrously virtually everywhere else. Another return to Hollywood to appear in the musical The Man of La Mancha was also met with an icy reception.Loren spent the majority of the mid-'70s exclusively in Italy, starring in de Sica's Il Viaggio and reuniting with Mastroianni in 1975's La Pupa del Gangster. When a dubbed version of 1977's Una Giornata Particolare found favor with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, 1978's The Brass Target and the next year's Firepower. Also in 1979, Loren penned her autobiography, Sophia -- Living and Loving: Her Own Story, and in 1980 played herself in a TV-movie based on the book. She did not reappear before the cameras for another four years, instead writing a beauty book and launching a perfume named in her honor. In the wake of 1984's Qualcosa di Biondo she appeared onscreen rarely, teaming with Mastroianni one last time in Robert Altman's 1994 film Ready to Wear (Pret-a-Porter) and making a successful return to Hollywood filmmaking with the 1996 hit comedy Grumpier Old Men. In 1997, she collaborated with director Roger Hanin on the docudrama Soleil, co-starring Phillippe Noiret. In honor of her lengthy career, Sophia Loren was also the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. Though film roles were few and far between into the 2000s, Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine -- a lavish tribute to all things Italian.

Trivia: Bologna-born Rosanno Brazzi abandoned his law studies at San Marco University when his parents were killed by fascists. Becoming an actor, Brazzi rapidly rose to matinee-idol status after his film debut in 1939; but while making faces before the Mussolini-controlled cameras by day, he was tirelessly active in the Resistance by night. He made his first Hollywood film, Little Women, in 1949, but it was his multi-hued portrayal of the impotent Count Vincenzo Toriato-Faurini in The Barefoot Contessa (1954) that won him international stardom. He went on to play such suave Europeans as Renato di Rossi in Summertime (1955) and Emile DeBecque in South Pacific (1958), after which his film roles tended to become routine and repetitive. An occasional visitor to television after his first small-screen appearance on a 1960 episode of The June Allyson Show, Brazzi was a regular on the Harold Robbins-created series The Survivors (1969), playing Onassis clone Antaeus Riakos. Turning to directing in the mid-1960s (sometimes under the nom de film of Edward Ross), Brazzi's best-known effort in this capacity was the modest family-oriented film The Christmas That Almost Wasn't (1966). From 1940 to 1981, Rosanno Brazzi was the husband of actress Lidia Bartalini; after her death, he married another actress, Ilse Fischer.

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.