Trivia: Brassy blonde leading lady Shirley Eaton could be labelled the British equivalent of such American "blonde bombshells" as Barbara Nichols, Joyce Jameson and Joi Lansing. From her first film appearance in 1954 onward, Eaton excelled in roles calling for equal parts comic know-how and feminine pulchritude. Later in her career, Eaton essayed a number of straight dramatic roles. Shirley Eaton is best known for her brief assignment as the unfortunate gold-painted girl in the 1964 James Bond caper Goldfinger, though it was necessary to hire a voice actress to dub over Shirley's provincial speech patterns.

Trivia: American actor Hugh O'Brian accrued his interest in acting while dancing with movie starlets at the Hollywood Canteen during his wartime Marine days. O'Brian attended the University of Cincinnati briefly, and later supported himself selling menswear door-to-door. He made his first film, Never Fear, in 1950, working but sporadically during the next five years; what few acting parts he received were on the basis of his broad shoulders and six-foot height. In one film, Fireman Save My Child (1954), O'Brian was cast because he and costar Buddy Hackett physically matched the previously filmed long shots of Fireman's original stars, Abbott and Costello. Answering a cattle-call tryout for the new ABC TV western Wyatt Earp in 1955, O'Brian was almost instantly chosen for the leading role by author Stuart Lake, who'd known the real Wyatt and had been his biographer for many years (reportedly Earp's widow also okayed O'Brien after a single glance). O'Brian became a major TV star thanks to Wyatt Earp, which ran for 249 episodes until 1961. The series was not only tough on the actor but on his fans; reportedly there was a sharp increase in gun accidents during Wyatt Earp's run, due to young would-be Earps who were trying to emulate Wyatt's fast draw (this despite the fact that the TV Earp, like the real one, used his firearms only when absolutely necessary). Like most western TV stars, O'Brian swore he was through with shoot-em-ups when Earp ceased production, and throughout the '60s he worked in almost every type of film and theatrical genre but westerns. He showed considerable skill in the realm of musical comedy, and became a top draw in the summer-stock and dinner theatre circuit. In 1972, O'Brian starred in the computer-happy secret-agent TV series Search, which lasted only a single season. As he became the focus of hero worship from grown-up Baby Boomers, O'Brian relaxed his resistance toward Wyatt Earp and began showing up on live and televised western retrospectives. The actor reprised the Earp role in two 1989 episodes of the latter-day TV western Paradise, opposite Gene Barry in his old TV role of Bat Masterson. He was Earp again in the 1991 TV movie The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw, in which he managed to shine in the company of several other cowboy-show veterans (including Barry, again) and was permitted to walk into the sunset as an offscreen chorus warbled the Wyatt Earp theme music! Hugh O'Brian's most recent turn at Ol' Wyatt was in a hastily assembled CBS movie mostly comprised of clips from the old Earp series, and released to capitalize on Kevin Costner's big-budget Wyatt Earp film of 1994. O'Brian died in 2016, at age 91.

Trivia: A recording artist from age 14, 1950s teen-idol Fabian rose to stardom with such Doc Pomus/ Mort Shuman compositions as "Hound Dog Man" and "Turn Me Loose." Fabian functioned best under the careful tutelage of Bandstand producer Dick Clark and with the benefit of the songwriting input of Pomus and Shuman. Many of his earliest film appearances (North to Alaska [1960], Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation [1962]) indicated that Fabian could be an appealing screen personality with the proper guidance. His popularity suffered a severe setback when he guest-starred as a psychopathic killer on the 1961 TV series Bus Stop; the episode, "A Lion is in the Streets," was considered so reprehensibly violent that it prompted a congressional investigation. While he continued to make records and film appearances, Fabian's career peaked in the early 1960s and went downhill thereafter. Billing himself as Fabian Forte from 1970 onward, the singer/actor has continued to work in cheap horror films and cycle flicks, and has made a few moderately successful TV guest appearances.

Trivia: Smooth, refined British star Leo Genn is known for his relaxed charm and "black velvet" voice. Before becoming an actor, he received a law degree at Cambridge and worked as a barrister in the early '20s. In 1930 he debuted onstage; for several years he continued earning money with legal services, meanwhile gaining experience in both plays and films. In 1939 he finally gave up the law to make his Broadway debut. He served with the Royal Artillery during World War II; in 1943 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and in 1945 he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. On several occasions during the war he was granted leave to appear in films. At war's end he became one of Britain's investigators of war crimes at the Belsen concentration camp and went on to be an assistant prosecutor for the Belsen trial. After his small but noteworthy role as the Constable of France in Laurence Olivier's film Henry V (1944), he was invited to the U.S., where he had a great theatrical triumph in the 1946 Broadway production of Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest. His stage and screen career flourished afterwards in both the U.S. and England. Onscreen he was usually cast in smart, likable, subtle character leads and supporting roles. For his portrayal of Gaius Petronius, Nero's counselor, in Quo Vadis (1951), he received a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nomination.

Trivia: British entertainer Stanley Holloway tried to make a go of his first job as a clerk in a Billingsgate fish market, but the call of the theatre was loud and strong. Originally planning an operatic career, Holloway studied singing in Milan, but this came to an end when World War One began. Finishing up his service with the infantry, Holloway headed for the stage again, making his London premiere in 1919's Kissing Time. His first film was The Rotters (1921), and the first time the public outside the theatres heard his robust voice was on radio in 1923. Holloway toured the music hall-revue circuit with his comic monologues, usually centered around his self-invented characters "Sam Small" and "The Ramsbottoms." Holloway's entree into talking pictures was with a 1930 film version of his stage success, The Co-Optimist. The British film industry of the '30s was more concerned in turning out "quota quickies" so that Hollywood would send over an equal number of American films, but Holloway was able to survive in these cheap pictures, occasionally rising to the heights of such productions as Squibs (1935) and The Vicar of Bray (1937). In 1941, Holloway was cast in one of the prestige films of the season, George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara; this led to top-drawer film appearances throughout the war years, notably This Happy Breed (1944), The Way to the Stars (1945) and Brief Encounter (1947). Though he'd had minimal Shakespearian experience, Holloway was selected by Laurence Olivier to play the Gravedigger in Olivier's filmization of Hamlet (1947), a role he'd forever be associated with and one he'd gently parody in 1969's Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Gaining an American audience through repeated showings of his films on early-'50s TV, Holloway took New York by storm as Alfred P. Doolittle in the stage smash My Fair Lady - a role he'd repeat in the 1964 film version (after James Cagney had turned it down), and win an Oscar in the bargain. Continuing his activities in all aspects of British show business -- including a 1960 one-man show, Laughs and Other Events -- Holloway decided he'd take a whack at American TV as the butler protagonist of the 1962 sitcom Our Man Higgins. It's difficult to ascertain the quality of this series, since it had the miserable luck of being scheduled opposite the ratings-grabbing Beverly Hillbillies. Stanley Holloway perservered with stage, movie, and TV appearances into the '70s; in honor of one of his two My Fair Lady songs, he titled his 1981 autobiography Wiv a Little Bit of Luck.

Trivia: British actor Wilfred Hyde-White entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art upon graduation from Marlborough College. After some stage work, he made his first film in 1934 and became a stalwart in British movies like Rembrandt (1936) and The Demi-Paradise (1943), often billed as merely "Hyde White" and specializing in benign but stuffy upper-class types. Hyde-White received a somewhat larger role than usual in The Third Man (1949), principally because his character was an amalgam of two characters who were originally written for the erstwhile British comedy team Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne. Working both sides of the continent, Hyde-White appeared in such American productions as In Search of the Castaways (1962) and Gaily, Gaily (1969). His best-loved role was as Colonel Pickering in the 1964 Oscar-winner My Fair Lady, wherein he participated in two musical numbers, "The Rain in Spain" and "You Did It." Remaining in films until 1983, Hyde-White was still inducing audience chuckles in such films as The Cat and the Canary (1979), in which he appeared "posthumously" in a pre-filmed last will and testament.

Trivia: Israeli-born actress Daliah Lavi was trained as a dancer before her movie debut in the Swedish The People of Hemso (1955). From 1957 through 1960, the tall, long-legged brunette put her movie career on hold to serve in the Israeli army. Conversant in several languages, Lavi appeared in many international productions, mostly in a decorative capacity. Her film roles include the heroine in Lord Jim (1965) and Woody Allen's vis-a-vis in Casino Royale (1967). Lavi died in 2017, at age 74.

Trivia: "I am not a star and never was. I lack that essential spark." There are precious few filmgoers who would agree with British actor Dennis Price's doleful self-assessment. The son of a military man, the Oxford-educated Price embarked upon an acting career in 1937. After several seasons in John Gielgud's acting company, Price began making films in 1944. He was often cast as handsome scoundrels, notably the charmingly homicidal heir in 1949's Kind Hearts and Coronets. A busy character actor into the 1970s, Price gained a whole new flock of fans for his appearances as Jeeves in the BBC TVer The World of Wooster. He was last seen onscreen as one of Vincent Price's victims in Theatre of Blood (1973).

Trivia: Her boyish figure a strict departure from such zoftig 1940s German stars as Zarah Leander and Kristina Söderbaum, Marianne Hoppe excelled in the melodramas of Helmut Käutner, notably the home-front morale-booster Auf Wiedersehen, Franziska! (1941). A stage actress of some renown, she had come to the screen in 1933 but didn't really impress until marrying theater legend Gustaf Gründgens in 1936. The Svengali-like Gründgens took hand of her career, both on-stage and on the screen, and she became one of the most popular dramatic actresses of her day, her career continuing unabated after the fall of the Third Reich (and after a brief tenure working in a Berlin refugee camp) and even her 1946 divorce from Gründgens. She has appeared extensively on television.