Trivia: During his lifetime, it was hard to determine when and where actor Yul Brynner was born, simply because he changed the story in every interview; confronted with these discrepancies late in life, he replied, "Ordinary mortals need but one birthday." At any rate, it appears that Brynner's mother was part Russian, his father part Swiss, and that he lived in Russia until his mother moved the family to Manchuria and then Paris in the early '30s. He worked as a trapeze artist with the touring Cirque D'Hiver, then joined a repertory theater company in Paris in 1934. Brynner's fluency in Russian and French enabled him to build up a following with the Czarist expatriates in Paris, and his talents as a singer/guitarist increased his popularity. And when Michael Chekhov hired Brynner for his American theater company, he added a third language -- English -- to his repertoire. After several years of regional acting, Brynner was hired by the Office of War Information as an announcer for their French radio service. In 1945, Brynner was cast as Tsai-Yong in the musical play Lute Song, which starred Mary Martin; the production opened on Broadway in 1946, and, though its run was short, Brynner won the Most Promising Actor Donaldson award. He went on to do theater in London and direct early live television programs in the States, including a children's puppet show, Life With Snarky Parker. In 1949, the actor made his movie debut as a two-bit smuggler in a Manhattan-filmed quickie Port of New York, which has taken on a video-store life of its own since lapsing into the public domain. On the strength of his Lute Song work of several years earlier, Brynner was cast as the King of Siam in Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1951 musical The King and I. The play was supposed to be a vehicle for Gertrude Lawrence, with the king an important but secondary role; but so powerful was Brynner's work that the role was beefed up in rehearsal, causing supporting actor Murvyn Vye to quit the show when Vye's only song was cut to give more stage time to Brynner. The King and I was an enormous hit, supplying Brynner with the role of a lifetime, one in which he would repeat brilliantly in the 1956 film version -- and win an Oscar in the process. Cecil B. DeMille, impressed by Brynner's King performance, cast the actor as the Egyptian Pharoah Rameses I in DeMille's multimillion-dollar blockbuster The Ten Commandments (1956). It became difficult for Brynner to play a "normal" character after this, so he seldom tried, although he came close to subtle believability in Anastasia (1956) and The Journey (1959). The first baldheaded movie idol, Brynner occasionally donned a wig or, as in Taras Bulba (1962), a Russian pigtail, but his fans (particularly the ladies) preferred him "scalped," as it were. Outside of his film work, Brynner was also an accomplished photographer, and many of his pictures appeared in major magazine spreads or were used as official studio production stills. Hollywood changed radically in the '70s, and the sort of larger-than-life fare in which Brynner thrived thinned out; so, in 1972, the actor agreed to re-create his King and I role in an expensive weekly TV series, Anna and the King. But it lasted all of eight weeks. Brynner's last major film role was in the sci-fi thriller Westworld (1973) as a murderously malfunctioning robot, dressed in Western garb reminiscent of the actor's wardrobe in 1960's The Magnificent Seven. What could have been campy or ludicrous became a chilling characterization in Brynner's hands; his steady, steely-eyed automaton glare as he approached his human victims was one of the more enjoyably frightening filmgoing benefits of the decade. In 1977, Brynner embarked upon a stage revival of The King and I, and though he was dogged by tales of his outrageous temperament and seemingly petty demands during the tour, audiences in New York and all over the country loved the show. The actor inaugurated a second King tour in 1985; this time, however, he knew he was dying of lung cancer, but kept the news from both his fans and co-workers. Unable to perform the "Shall We Dance" waltz or get all the words out for the song "A Puzzlement," Brynner nonetheless played to packed audiences willing to shell out 75 dollars per ticket. Two months after the play closed in 1985, Brynner died in a New York hospital -- still insisting that his public not know the severity of his condition until after his death, although he had recorded a dramatic public-service announcement to be broadcast afterward that blamed the illness on smoking.

Trivia: George Segal kicked off his performing career as a boy magician in his Long Island neighborhood. An accomplished banjoist, Segal played with Bruno Lynch and His Imperial Jazz before enrolling at Columbia University. After three years' military service, Segal resettled in New York in 1959, and that same year was cast in his first off-Broadway play. Entering films with 1961's The Young Doctors, Segal quickly established himself as one of Hollywood's most accomplished young character actors; in 1967, he received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Nick in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. When one compiles a list of favorite films from the late 1960s-early 1970s, one usually spends a great deal of time exclaiming "Hey! Segal was in that, too." He played a hustling POW in King Rat (1965), a Cagneyesque hood in Saint Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), ulcerated homicide detective Mo Brummel in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), a neurotic New York Jewish intellectual in Bye Bye Braverman (1968), a straight-laced bachelor in love with a foul-mouthed hooker in The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), and a repressed lawyer saddled with an outrageously senile mother in Where's Poppa? (1970). During this same period, Segal had an arrangement with the ABC TV network, permitting him to star in television adaptations of classic Broadway plays: he was cast as George opposite Nicol Williamson's Lenny in Of Mice and Men, then switched gears as vicious escaped criminal Glenn Griffin in The Desperate Hours. Throughout this busy period in his life, Segal fronted the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band, cutting several records and making a number of memorable Tonight Show appearances. In 1973, Segal's successful screen teaming with Glenda Jackson in A Touch of Class enabled him to demand a much higher price for his film services; unfortunately, many of the films that followed--The Black Bird (1975) and The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976) in particular--failed to justify Segal's seven-figure price tag. In the 1980s, Segal starred in two well-written but low-rated TV weeklies, Take Five (1987) and Murphy's Law (1989). His film career was lifted from the doldrums in the late 1980s with such plum roles as the pond-scum father of Kirstie Alley's baby in Look Who's Talking (1989) and the "pinko" comedy writer in For the Boys (1991). Segal's projects of the 1990s have included the syndicated TV adventure series High Tide (1994) and such film roles as the bemused husband of abrasive Jewish mama Mary Tyler Moore in the 1996 Ben Stiller vehicle Flirting with Disaster. In 1996, Segal found renewed success on television playing a well-meaning but rather duplicitous publisher whose estranged daughter comes to work for him in the razor-sharp NBC sitcom Just Shoot Me. Though he worked less frequently during the 21st century, he appeared in a variety of projects including The Linda McCartney Story as the main character's father, Fielder's Choice, 2012, and Love and Other Drugs.

Trivia: A former showgirl and nightclub singer, Janice Rule was signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1951. It would be nearly ten years before Rule's truly worthwhile roles would outnumber her inconsequential parts. She all but cornered the market in bitter, neurotic socialites in the 1960s, playing such parts as the small-town wealthy shrew who drunkenly swallows a string of valuable pearls in The Chase (1966) and Burt Lancaster's vitriolic ex-mistress in The Swimmer (1968). Playing these profoundly disturbed screen characters must have been cathartic for Ms. Rule, who took time off from acting in the late 1970s to become a professional psychoanalyst. From 1961 through 1979, Janice Rule was married to actor Ben Gazzara.

Trivia: Burly character actor Pat Hingle held down a variety of bread-and-butter jobs--mostly in the construction field--while studying at the University of Texas, the Hagen-Bergdorf studio, the Theatre Wing and the Actors Studio. Earning his Equity card in 1950, Hingle made his Broadway debut in 1953 as Harold Koble in End as a Man (he would repeat this role in the 1957 film adaptation, retitled The Strange One). One year later, he was cast as Gooper-aka "Brother Man"-in Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer-winning play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Also in 1954, he made his inaugural film appearance in On the Waterfront as a bartender. Though a familiar Broadway presence and a prolific TV actor, Hingle remained a relatively unknown film quantity, so much so that he was ballyhooed as one of the "eight new stars" in the 1957 release No Down Payment. As busy as he was before the cameras in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Hingle's first love was the theatre, where he starred in such productions as William Inge's Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Archibald MacLeish's JB, and later appeared in the one-man show Thomas Edison: Reflections of a Genius. His made-for-TV assignments include such historical personages as Colonel Tom Parker in Elvis (1979), Sam Rayburn in LBJ: The Early Years (1988), J. Edgar Hoover in Citizen Cohn (1992) and Earl Warren in Simple Justice (1993). Among his more recent big-screen assignments has been Commissioner Gordon in the Batman films. Amidst his hundreds of TV guest shots, Pat Hingle has played the regular roles of Chief Paulton in Stone (1980) and Henry Cobb in Blue Skies (1988), was briefly a replacement for Doc (Milburn Stone) on the vintage western Gunsmoke, and has shown up sporadically as the globe-trotting father of Tim Daly and Steven Weber on the evergreen sitcom Wings.

Trivia: Born Boris Milanovich, Dexter was a square-jawed supporting player and former lead, often cast in tough character roles. As early as his first film, 1950's The Asphalt Jungle, the talented Dexter found himself overshadowed by the star power of Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore, Louis Calhern and Marilyn Monroe. Occasionally, Dexter was cast in a role that stuck in the memory banks, such as Bugsy Siegel in 1960's The George Raft Story. He also gained a degree of fame as the producer of such worthwhile films as The Naked Runner (1967) and The Lawyer (1970) and Little Fauss and big Halsy(1970); reportedly, he was able to gain a foothold as a producer thanks to Frank Sinatra, whom Dexter once saved from drowning. Brad Dexter married and divorced singer Peggy Lee.

Trivia: A product of New York's Professional Children's School, Alfred Ryder was making a living as an actor at the age of 8. In 1929, Ryder made his Broadway debut, playing "lost boy" Curly in Eva Le Galleine's production of Peter Pan. As a teenager and young adult, Ryder studied his craft with such masters as Benno Schneider, Robert Lewis and Lee Strasberg. He went on to appear in such plays as Awake and Sing and Yellow Jack, and for many years was heard as Sammy in the radio serial Rise of the Goldbergs. While serving in the military in 1944, he made his first film, Winged Victory, in which he was billed as "PFC Alfred Ryder." After the war, he returned to the stage, re-emerging in films in the late 1950s. His movie credits of the 1960s include significant character parts in Hotel (1967) and True Grit (1968). Ryder also made scores of TV guest-star appearances, including the role of Professor Carter in the opening Star Trek episode "The Man Trap" (1966). Alfred Ryder made his last film in 1976, thereafter concentrating on his stage activities as actor and director.

Trivia: The son of an English-immigrant clothier, Mike Kellin decided to become an actor in the second grade, after watching a school production of A Christmas Carol. The restless Kellin briefly attended three colleges before serving in the Navy in World War II. After flunking out of Yale Drama School, Kellin headed to New York, where he studied acting under Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner and Stella Adler. Denied leading-man assignments because of what he described as his "lived-in face," Kellin's big Broadway break came in the role of the abrasive sergeant in the 1949 Broadway comedy At War with the Army; he would reprise his role in the 1950 film version, which starred Martin and Lewis. Kellin went on to win the Tony award for his performance in the 1956 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Pipe Dream. In 1960, Kellin was cast as slovenly Chief Mate McCarthy in The Wackiest Ship in the Army; when this film was adapted into a TV series in 1965, Kellin came along for the ride in substantially the same role, though the character was rechristened as Chief Petty Officer Willie Miller. Mike Kellin's most celebrated movie appearance was his Oscar-nominated role as the father of the imprisoned protagonist in Midnight Express (1978).

Trivia: Supporting actor Clifford David began appearing onscreen in the late '60s.

Trivia: Character actor Bert Freed prepared for his theatrical career at Penn State. Freed made his first Broadway appearance in the forgotten 1942 production Johnny 2 X 4, then went on to such long-running efforts as Counterattack, One Touch of Venus and Annie Get Your Gun. In films from 1947, he was most often cast as big-city detectives and small-town sheriffs. Some of his more memorable movie roles include Sgt. Boulanger in Paths of Glory (1957), Christopher Jones' institutionalized father in Wild in the Streets (1968), and all-around meanie Stuart Posner in Billy Jack (1969). A busy television actor, Freed settled down to a weekly-series grind only once, as Rufe Ryker on the 1966 video version of Shane. Outside of his performing activities, Bert Freed was for many years a member of the Motion Picture Academy's Committee of Foreign Films.

Trivia: Wiry, solemn-faced American actor Curt Conway interrupted stage work to appear in his first film, Gentleman's Agreement (1947). As Bert McAnny in the Oscar-winning film, Conway was one of many Anglo-Saxon types who opened mouth and inserted foot when Gregory Peck, investigating anti-Semitism, pretended to be Jewish. Conway was a stalwart of television's "live" days of the '50s, at which time he did some directing as well as acting. Twilight Zone fans will remember a heavily made-up Conway in the 1963 episode "He's Alive"; the actor played a shadowy stranger who gives advice to a neo-Nazi activist (Dennis Hopper) on how to get ahead, and who at the end of the episode turns out to be--to everyone's surprise but the audience--Adolph Hitler. Having begun his film career in a movie indictment of race prejudice, Curt Conway ended his career in a film dealing with the same subject, 1971's The Man.

Trivia: In the '70s, American actor Clifton James became the foremost film impersonator of Southern redneck sheriffs -- but he had to go to England to do it. A graduate of the Actors Studio, James secured small roles in such Manhattan-filmed productions as On the Waterfront (1954) and in well over 100 TV programs. But his parts were tiny and frequently unbilled, relegating James to the ranks of "Who is that?" character actors. All this changed when James was cast as Sheriff Pepper in the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973), which led to a reprise of the character in the next Bond epic The Man With the Golden Gun (1973). Since that time, the stocky, ruddy-cheeked James has been prominent in such films as Silver Streak (1976), The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977) and Superman II (1980). In 1981, James was a regular on the brief TV sitcom Lewis and Clark. James kicked off the '90s as one of the willing but floundering cast members of that disaster of disasters, Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). He continued working in small roles through the rest of his life. James died in 2017, at age 96.

Trivia: Arthur Peterson played character and supporting roles on stage, television, and feature films. On television, fans of the series Soap (1977-1981), a funny spoof of soap operas, may remember Peterson for playing the Major. North Dakota born and raised, Peterson first obtained a degree in theater from the University of Minnesota before becoming a professional actor with the first Federal Theater Project. Peterson made his media debut in 1936 with a regular role on the radio serial The Guiding Light. During WWII, Peterson fought within General Patton's third regimen. Upon his discharge, Peterson appeared in the ABC network's first situation comedy, That's O'Toole. Peterson's stage work included appearances in such plays as Inherit the Wind. His film career has been sporadic, including such titles as Born Wild (1968) and the television movie Rollercoaster (1977). Peterson spent 1981 to 1991 touring the country with his wife in a Pasadena Playhouse production of The Gin Game (a play made famous on Broadway by Jessica Tandy and her husband Hume Cronyn). When the play's long run ended, Peterson retired from acting. He passed away on October 31, 1996, of Alzheimer's disease in the Amberwood Convalescent Hospital in Los Angeles at age 83.

Trivia: A graduate of the University of Michigan, Strother Martin was the National Junior Springboard Diving Champion when he came to Hollywood as a swimming coach in the late 1940s. He stuck around Lala-land to play a few movie bits and extra roles before finally receiving a role of substance in The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Lean and limber in his early day, Martin was frequently cast in parts which called upon his athletic prowess (e.g. a drawling big-league ball player in 1951's Rhubarb). As his face grew more pocked and his body more paunched with each advancing year, Martin put his reedy, whiny voice and sinister squint to excellent use as a villain, most often in westerns. It took him nearly 20 years to matriculate from character actor to character star. In 1967, Martin skyrocketed to fame as the sadistic prison-farm captain in Cool Hand Luke: his character's signature line, "What we have here is a failure t' communicate," became a national catchphrase. While he continued accepting secondary roles for the rest of his career, Martin was awarded top billing in two sleazy but likeable programmers, Brotherhood of Satan (1971) and Ssssssss (1973). A veteran of scores of television shows, Strother Martin was seen on a weekly basis as Aaron Donager in Hotel De Paree (1959) and as star Jimmy Stewart's country cousin in Hawkins (1973).

Trivia: American character actress Gertrude Flynn started out playing innocent young girls on Broadway during the 1930s. She made her film debut in 1954 with Barefoot Contessa and continued appearing periodically in films through the mid-1960s. Flynn made her final film appearance in 1984 in Bad Manners.

Trivia: A graduate of the Roger Corman school of fast-n-furious filmmaking, American cinematographer John A. Alonzo has been fortunate enough to be associated with some of the most significant films of the 1970s. He oversaw the photography of such classics as Harold and Maude (1971), Sounder (1972), Lady Sings the Blues (1972), and Norma Rae, and was co-photographer for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978). The ever-inventive Alonzo was the man whose 1974 Chinatown set the industry standard for the use of soft focus and saturated color to convey the "look" of the 1930s. He remained in demand into the 1980s and 1990s, shooting films as varied as the airborne actioner Blue Thunder (1981) and the cartoon/live action hybrid Cool World (1992). Thus far, Alonzo's only foray into film directing has been the engaging rock-n-roll comedy FM (1978).

Trivia: American character actress Olive Dunbar usually played severe, disapproving gossips in films on television.