Trivia: Ever on the lookout for the "new Deanna Durbin", MGM talent scouts discovered coloratura soprano Kathryn Grayson while she was the teenaged vocalist on Eddie Cantor's radio program. Grayson's first film was the 1940 MGM programmer Andy Hardy's Private Secretary, in which she was given the opportunity to sing "Lucia" and "Voices of Spring." Her first leading role was as the title character in MGM's 1942 remake of Rio Rita; years after the fact, Grayson would remember the kindnesses and helpfulness of her co-stars, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Grayson herself leaned towards "diva" behavior the more popular she became, but audiences were less interested in backstage intrigues and more interested in the end result of such films as Anchors Aweigh (1943), The Kissing Bandit (1948), and The Toast of New Orleans (1950). In many of her best films, notably Showboat (1951) and Kiss Me Kate (1953, in which her curvaceous figure was delightfully emphasized in form-fitting Elizabethan garb), Grayson was teamed with baritone Howard Keel, with whom she would later appear in nightclubs and tour in summer stock. Kathryn Grayson made her last film in 1956; she returned before the cameras in the 1980s on (where else?) Murder She Wrote, and died in February 2010, around a week after her 88th birthday.

Trivia: Born in Illinois, Howard Keel was raised in California by his widowed mother. Here he supported himself with odd jobs after high-school graduation, vaguely holding out hopes of becoming a professional singer. His first gig was as a singing busboy at a Los Angeles cafe for the princely wage of $15 per week. Temporarily discouraged, Keel took a job at Douglas Aircraft; the executive staff, impressed by Keel's movie-star looks and pleasant baritone, sent the young man out on a tour of Douglas' other plants, where as a "manufacturing representative" he entertained the workers while they hastened to meet their wartime quotas. After winning several singing contests, Keel was hired by Rodgers and Hammerstein; he replaced John Raitt in the Broadway production of Carousel and played Curley in the London staging of Oklahoma. It was while in England that Keel, billed as Harold Keel, made his film debut in a villainous role in The Small Voice (1949). He was brought back to Hollywood to play Frank Butler in MGM's filmization of Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun. This led to leading roles in such subsequent big-budget MGM musicals as Showboat (1951), Lovely to Look At (1952), Kiss Me Kate (1953), Rose Marie (1954), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Kismet (1955) and Jupiter's Darling (1955). Ever on the lookout for a straight, nonsinging role, Keel was occasionally satisfied with such films as Callaway Went Thataway (1951) (in which he essayed a dual role), Desperate Search (1953) and The Big Fisherman (1959). After parting company with MGM, Keel appeared in nightclub and touring companies, often in the company of his frequent MGM co-star Kathryn Grayson, and also starred in several medium-budget westerns; he also was cast in the British sci-fi classic Day of the Triffids (1963). Howard Keel's most recent on-camera credit was the sizeable supporting role of Clayton Farrow on the TV series Dallas.

Trivia: In the latter stages of her long career, musical comedy star Ann Miller spent much of her time thanking her colleagues for not revealing a secret concerning her early days in Hollywood. According to Miller, she was but 14 years old when she began receiving sizeable screen roles in such RKO films as New Faces of 1937 (1937), Having Wonderful Time (1938), and Room Service (1938), thus it was illegal for her to appear on the set without a guardian or tutor. Perhaps the reason that her co-stars conspired to keep her age a secret was because she was doing so; Miller was in fact 18 when she signed her RKO contract. Not that any of this bears the slightest relevance to Ms. Miller's dazzling terpsichorean talent (in one of her Columbia-starring vehicles, she set a world record for taps-per-minute) nor her stellar contributions to such MGM Technicolor musicals as Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949), and Kiss Me Kate (1953). More famous for her winning personality and shapely stems than her acting ability, Miller tended to flounder a bit in her non-singing and non-dancing appearances; thus, when the MGM brand of musicals went out of fashion in the mid-'50s, her film career came to a standstill. Continuing to prosper on the nightclub circuit, Miller made a return before the cameras in a celebrated 1970 TV soup commercial, produced and directed by Stan Freberg and choreographed by Hermes Pan in the all-stops-out manner of a Busby Berkeley spectacular. During that same period, Miller played to SRO crowds in the touring company of Mame. In the mid-'70s, she enjoyed a personal triumph when she co-starred with Mickey Rooney in the Broadway musical Sugar Babies. Ann Miller is the author of two autobiographies, 1974's Miller's High Life (which details her three marriages in an engagingly cheeky fashion) and 1990's Tapping the Force (which dwelt upon her fascination with the Occult).

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: The son of vaudevillians, ebullient musical comedy star Bobby Van had a brief but rewarding MGM screen career in the early '50s. If for nothing else, Van will always be remembered as the ecstatic young fellow who made like a human pogo stick during an expansive production number in Small Town Girl (1953). When musicals went out of vogue, Van had to make do with atrocities like The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1965). He did rather better in nightclubs, first as a solo and then as partner to his old MGM buddy Mickey Rooney. In the early '70s, Van launched a profitable second career as a TV game show host; his last such stint before his death in 1980 was the syndicated nightly audience-participation series Make Me Laugh (1978-1979). Bobby Van was married to actress Elaine Joyce, a frequent celebrity contestant on her husband's TV programs.

Trivia: Actor Keenan Wynn was the son of legendary comedian Ed Wynn and actress Hilda Keenan, and grandson of stage luminary Frank Keenan. After attending St. John's Military Academy, Wynn obtained his few professional theatrical jobs with the Maine Stock Company. After overcoming the "Ed Wynn's Son" onus (his father arranged his first job, with the understanding that Keenan would be on his own after that), Wynn developed into a fine comic and dramatic actor on his own in several Broadway plays and on radio. He was signed to an MGM contract in 1942, scoring a personal and professional success as the sarcastic sergeant in 1944's See Here Private Hargrove (1944). Wynn's newfound popularity as a supporting actor aroused a bit of jealousy from his father, who underwent professional doldrums in the 1940s; father and son grew closer in the 1950s when Ed, launching a second career as a dramatic actor, often turned to his son for moral support and professional advice. Wynn's film career flourished into the 1960s and 1970s, during which time he frequently appeared in such Disney films as The Absent-Minded Professor (1960) and The Love Bug (1968) as apoplectic villain Alonso Hawk. Wynn also starred in such TV series as Troubleshooters and Dallas. Encroaching deafness and a drinking problem plagued Wynn in his final years, but he always delivered the goods onscreen. Wynn was the father of writer/director Tracy Keenan Wynn and writer/actor Edmund Keenan (Ned) Wynn.

Trivia: Whitmore attended Yale, where he joined the Yale Drama School Players and co-founded the Yale radio station. After serving in World War II with the Marines, he did some work in stock and then debuted on Broadway in 1947's Command Decision. He entered films in 1949, going on to play key supporting roles; occasionally, he also played leads. For his work in Battleground (1949), his second film, he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. He starred in the early '60s TV series "The Law and Mr. Jones." He won much acclaim for his work in the one-man stage show Give 'Em Hell, Harry!, in which he played Harry Truman; he reprised the role in the 1975 screen version, for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. After 1980 his screen appearances were infrequent. He is the father of actor James Whitmore Jr.

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: Ron Randell was engaged in radio and stage work in his native Australia from his teens. Randell's first leading film role was as a real-life aviation hero in Smithy (1946). In Hollywood, Randell starred as fictional detectives Bulldog Drummond and the Lone Wolf, at the tail end of both of those characters' long-running B-picture series. He spent the 1950s fluctuating between American and British productions; he was featured as Cole Porter in Kiss Me Kate (1958) and starred in the 1957 TV espionage series O.S.S. Ron Randell continued his stage career into the 1990s, going on to join Tony Randall's National Actors Theater.

Trivia: Anyone born with a name like Worster Van Eps probably had no choice but to become a top tennis pro. But when he entered films in 1937, Van Eps altered his name to the more hero-friendly Willard Parker. A leading man at Columbia in the 1940s, Parker, a handsome hunk in the Sonny Tufts mold (though a far better actor), never quite reached the summit. His best-remembered performance was as the bombastic, clueless "other man" in the 1953 musical Kiss Me Kate. From 1955 through 1957, Parker built up a kiddie fan following as co-star (with Harry Lauter) of the TV series Tales of the Texas Rangers. Retiring from acting in the late '60s to become a thriving real estate agent, Willard Parker was married from 1951 to actress Virginia Field, with whom he co-starred in The Earth Dies Screaming (1966) -- the last film for both.

Trivia: A longtime character actor/stuntman/leading man/director, Dave O'Brien (born David Barclay) was born in Big Springs, Texas, and entered movies in the early '30s as a stuntman and occasional character actor -- he is probably best remembered by college students of the late '60s and early '70s for his portrayal of the crazed marijuana smoker in the exploitation film Reefer Madness. During the late '30s and early '40s, O'Brien also played the title role in the serial Captain Midnight, and was the responsible adult in the East Side Kids series, but it was as the lead in MGM's Pete Smith Specialty comedy shorts -- which O'Brien also directed, under his real name David Barclay -- that he was best known to '40s moviegoers. The Pete Smith shorts, which were basically comedic looks at human foibles, took full advantage of O'Brien's background in stunt work, and hold up extremely well today. O'Brien still played occasional lead roles, especially in B-pictures such as The Man Who Walks Alone (1946), an unusual comedy with serious overtones about a veteran returning home from World War II, but by the early '50s had moved into supporting parts, such as that of the stage manager in Kiss Me Kate (1953), directed by his fellow Pete Smith alumnus George Sidney. O'Brien later became a writer for Red Skelton on television.

Trivia: Stereotyped early on as a "silly ass" Englishman, Claud Allister perpetuated that stereotype in countless British and American films from 1929 through 1953. Allister made his Hollywood debut as Algy in 1929's Bulldog Drummond, then headed back to England to play peripheral roles in such Alexander Korda productions as The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and The Private Life of Don Juan (1934). Back in America in 1936, Allister settled into a string of brief, frequently uncredited roles, nearly always as a supercilious high-society twit. The fruity vocal tones of Claud Allister were ideally suited to the title character in the 1941 Disney animated feature The Reluctant Dragon.

Trivia: Belgian actress Ann Codee toured American vaudeville in the 'teens and twenties in a comedy act with her husband, American-born Frank Orth. The team made its film debut in 1929, appearing in a series of multilingual movie shorts. Thereafter, both Codee and Orth flourished as Hollywood character actors. Codee was seen in dozens of films as florists, music teachers, landladies, governesses and grandmothers. She played a variety of ethnic types, from the very French Mme. Poullard in Jezebel (1938) to the Teutonic Tante Berthe in The Mummy's Curse (1961). Ann Codee's last film appearance was as a tight-corseted committeewoman in Can-Can (1960).

Trivia: His given name was Pangiotopolous, but the Nashville-born dancer/choreographer adopted the mythological cognomen of Hermes Pan when he became a professional chorus boy. Among Pan's earliest Broadway appearances was in the Marx Bros. vehicle Animal Crackers in 1928. From 1933 onward, Pan worked most often in collaboration with Fred Astaire, plotting out the dance routines of the wonderful RKO Astaire/Rogers films. The working method seldom varied: Pan, who resembled Astaire, would map out Astaire's numbers while Astaire watched. Then he would assume Ginger Rogers' part when the dance duets were choreographed -- meaning that Pan had to be just as quick on his feet backwards as forwards. Oddly, Pan's first Academy Award was for Damsel in Distress, in which Astaire appeared without Ginger. Pan appeared onscreen as Betty Grable's partner in Moon Over Miami (1942), and was later paired with Rita Hayworth in My Gal Sal (1942); in both instances, Pan was exclusively a dancer, with nary a line of dialogue nor a character name. He finally did get to act in A Life of Her Own, a 1948 MGM musical drama starring Cyd Charisse. Pan continued his association with Fred Astaire into the television era, accruing an Emmy for the unforgettable 1958 special An Evening With Fred Astaire. In 1970, advertiser/satirist Stan Freberg hired Pan to choreograph a Busby Berkeley takeoff for his legendary "Great American Soups" commercial starring Ann Miller. Long after his retirement, Hermes Pan continued to be honored by a grateful industry: he received the National Film Award in 1980 and a special trophy from the Joffrey ballet in 1986.

Trivia: Husky actor Mitchell Lewis attended Annapolis and Syracus University before making his stage debut in 1902. Lewis went on tour with such theatrical heavyweights as William Collier, Dustin Farnum and Alla Nazimova. He made his film bow in 1914 at the old Thanhouser Company. Specializing in ethnic roles, Lewis spent both the silent and talkie era playing menacing gypsies (The Cuckoos, The Bohemina Girl), Arab potentates (he was horse-loving Sheik Iderim in the 1926 version of Ben-Hur), East Indian warriors and Native American chiefs. He even donned blackface to portray "Tambo" in Al Jolson's Big Boy (1930). In 1937, Lewis was signed to an MGM lifetime contract, which assured him steady if not always stellar work for the next eighteen years. One of his many MGM bit-part assignments was the green-skinned Winkie Captain ("You've killed her! She's dead! Long live Dorothy!") in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Active throughout his career in charitable pursuits, Mitchell Lewis served on the original board of the Motion Picture Relief Fund.