Trivia: Though she despised the appellation "the girl next door," this was how June Allyson was promoted throughout most of her MGM career. The blonde, raspy-voiced actress was born in a tenement section of the Bronx. Her career nearly ended before it began when 8-year-old June seriously injured her back in a fall. For four years she wore a steel brace, then spent several more months in physical therapy. Thanks to the financial support of her grown half-brother, June was able to take dancing lessons. At 19, she made her film debut in the Vitaphone short Swing for Sale (1937). In her earliest movie appearances (notably the 1937 Educational Studios 2-reeler Dime a Dance) June projected a far more worldly, all-knowing image than she would convey in her later feature films. After co-starring in such Broadway productions as Sing Out the News, Very Warm for May and Panama Hattie and Best Foot Forward, June was signed to an MGM contract in 1942. The studio quickly began molding June's screen image of a freckled-faced, peaches-and-cream "best girl" and perfect wife. She was permitted to display some grit in The Girl in White (1952), playing New York City's first woman doctor, but most of her screen characters were quietly subordinate to the male leads. One of her favorite co-stars was James Stewart, with whom she appeared in The Stratton Story (1949) and The Glenn Miller Story (1954). In 1955, she completely broke away from her on-camera persona as the spiteful wife of Jose Ferrer in The Shrike (1955), a role for which she was personally selected by the demanding Ferrer. June was the wife of actor/ producer/ director Dick Powell, a union that lasted from 1945 until Powell's death in 1963, despite several well-publicized breakups. She starred in and hosted the 1960 TV anthology series The June Allyson Show, produced by Powell's Four Star Productions. After her film career ended, June made a handful of nightclub singing appearances; in 1972, she made a brief screen comeback in They Only Kill Their Masters, astonishing her fans by playing a murderess. In recent years, June Allyson has appeared in several TV commercials.

Trivia: Of Basque descent, Jose Iturbi trained for a musical career in Spain, Malta and Paris. By the time he was 12, he was playing piano in Spanish cabarets, and upon reaching his early adulthood he supported himself as a silent-movie accompanist. From 1919 to 1923, Iturbi was head of the music department of the Conservatory of Geneva. In the U.S. from 1929, he spent eight years as conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic. From the early 1940s onward, Iturbi made his mission to broaden the popularity of Classic musical. He appeared in several MGM films, usually cast as himself, even when playing a straight dramatic role in the Jeannette MacDonald vehicle Three Daring Daughters (1948). Though he gained pop-chart prominence with his Spanish-flavored compositions, Iturbi's biggest success during his Hollywood years was his adaptation of Chopin's "Polonaise in A Minor" for the 1945 film A Song to Remember. Jose Iturbi was the brother of actress Amparo Iturbi.

Trivia: Thanks to the strenous efforts of her mother, a former dancer, American child actress Margaret O'Brien won her first film role at age four in the Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musical Babes on Broadway (1941). MGM was so impressed by the child's expressiveness and emotional range that she was given the title role in the wartime morale-booster Journey For Margaret (1942). She was so camera-savvy by the time she appeared in Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case (1943) that the film's star Lionel Barrymore declared that had this been the Middle Ages, O'Brien would have been burned at the stake! Some of her coworkers may secretly have wished that fate on O'Brien, since she reportedly flaunted her celebrity on the set, ostensibly at the encouragement of her parents. Famed for her crying scenes, O'Brien really let the faucets flow in her best film, Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), in which her character also predated Wednesday Addams by two decades with a marked fascination for death and funerals. In 1944, O'Brien was given a special Academy Award, principally for work in Meet Me In St. Louis. As she grew, her charm faded; by 1951's Her First Romance, she was just one of a multitude of Hollywood teen ingenues. A comeback attempt in the 1956 film Glory was servicable, but the film was badly handled by its distributor RKO Radio and failed to re-establish the actress. A more fruitful role awaited her in a 1958 TV musical version of Little Women, in which O'Brien played Beth, the same role she'd essayed in the 1949 film version. In 1960, O'Brien had a strong supporting part in the period picture Heller in Pink Tights (1960), ironically playing a onetime child actress whose stage mother is trying to keep her in "kid" roles. In between summer theatre productions, O'Brien would resurface every so often in another TV show, reviewers would welcome her back, and then she'd be forgotten until the next part. The actress gained a great deal of weight in the late 1960s, turning this debility into an asset when she appeared in a "Marcus Welby MD" TV episode (starring her Journey for Margaret costar Robert Young) in which she played a woman susceptible to quack diet doctors. A bit thinner, and with eyes as wide and expressive as ever, O'Brien has recently appeared in a handful of episodes of "Murder She Wrote," that evergreen refuge for MGM luminaries of the past.

Trivia: Known to friends, family and fans as "The Schnozzola" because of his Cyrano-sized nose, American entertainer Jimmy Durante was the youngest child of an immigrant Italian barber. Fed up with his schooling by the second grade, Durante dedicated himself to becoming a piano player, performing in the usual dives, beer halls and public events. He organized a ragtime band, playing for such spots as the Coney Island College Inn and Harlem's Alamo Club. He secured two long-lasting relationships in 1921 when he married Maud Jeanne Olson and formed a professional partnership with dancer Eddie Jackson; two years later Durante and Jackson combined with another dancer, Lou Jackson, to form one of the best-known roughhouse teams of the 1920s. Clayton, Jackson and Durante opened their own speakeasy, the Club Durant (they couldn't afford the "E" on the sign), which quickly became the "in" spot for show-business celebrities and the bane of Prohibition agents. Durante was clearly the star of the proceedings, adopting his lifelong stage character of an aggressive, pugnacious singer, yelling "Stop the music" at the slightest provocation and behaving as though he had to finish his song before the authorities hauled him away for having the nerve to perform. Durante's trio went uptown in the Ziegfeld musical Show Girl in 1929, the same year that Durante made his screen debut in Roadhouse Nights. Though popular in personal appearances, Durante's overbearing performing style did not translate well to movies, especially when MGM teamed the megawatt Durante with stone-faced comedian Buster Keaton. Though Durante and Keaton liked each other, their comedy styles were not compatible. Durante had reached his peak in films by 1934, and was thereafter used only as a specialty or in supporting roles. On stage, however, Durante was still a proven audience favorite: he stopped the show with the moment in the 1935 Billy Rose stage musical Jumbo, wherein, while leading a live elephant away from his creditors, he was stopped by a cop. "What are you doing with that elephant?" demanded the cop. Durante looked askance and bellowed, "What elephant?" In hit after hit on Broadway, Durante was a metropolitan success, expanding his popularity nationwide with a radio program co-starring young comedian Garry Moore, which began in 1943, the year of Durante's first wife's death (she may or may not have been the "Mrs. Calabash" to whom he said goodnight at the end of each broadcast). Virtually out of films by the 1950s, Durante continued to thrive on TV and in nightclubs, finding solace in his private life with his 1960 marriage to Margie Little. By the mid-1960s, Durante was capable of fracturing a TV audience simply by mangling the words written for him on cue cards; a perennial of ABC's weekly Hollywood Palace, he took on a weekly series in his 76th year in a variety program co-starring the Lennon Sisters. Suffering several strokes in the 1970s, Durante decided to retire completely, though he occasionally showed up (in a wheelchair) for such celebrations as MGM's 50th anniversary. Few stars were as beloved as Durante, and even fewer were spoken of so highly and without any trace of jealousy or rancor after his death in 1980; perhaps this adulation was due in part to Durante's ending each performance by finding a telephone, dialing G-O-D, and saying "Thanks!"

Trivia: American actress Marsha Hunt, born Marcia Hunt, attended the Theodore Irving School of Dramatics while still a teenager. Simultaneously, she worked as a Powers model until she debuted onscreen in The Virginia Judge (1935) at age 18. Hunt went on to become a very busy screen actress through the early '50s. In the '30s she appeared in supporting roles such as bridesmaids and coeds, while in the '40s she played leads in second features and second leads and supporting roles in major productions. In the early '50s, during the heyday of the McCarthy Era "witch hunts," she was blacklisted by the studios for her liberal political beliefs, and after 1952 she appeared in only a handful of films, as well as the TV series Peck's Bad Girl. Through the '80s, however, she still turned up occasionally in character roles on TV. From 1938-43 she was married to editor (now director) Jerry Hopper. After 1946 she was married to movie/TV scriptwriter Robert Presnell Jr., who died in 1986. She remains active in social issues, lending her help to organizations involved with such issues as peace, poverty, population, and pollution; she is a frequent speaker on the issues that concern her, and she serves on nearly a dozen Boards of Directors. She was last onscreen in Johnny Got His Gun (1971).

Trivia: Hugh Herbert was a stage and vaudeville performer and playwright before coming to Hollywood as a dialogue director in the early talkie era. Signed as an actor at RKO Radio, Herbert played a variety of comic and noncomic roles in films like Hook Line and Sinker (1930), Danger Lights (1931) and Friends and Lovers (1931). His forte turned out to be comedy, as witness his sidesplitting performances as an arm-wrestling prime minister in Million Dollar Legs (1932) and an aphorism-spouting Chinaman in Diplomaniacs (1933). During his long association with Warner Bros. in the mid-1930s, Herbert developed his familiar half-in-the-bag screen persona, complete with fluttering, hand-clapping gestures and his trademarked cries of "woo woo!" and "oh, wunnerful, wunnerful." In the opinion of several film buffs, the quintessential Hugh Herbert performance can be found in the 1936 Warners musical Colleen (1936). At Universal in the 1940s, Herbert starred in a string of "B" comedies, one of which, There's One Born Every Minute (1942), represented the screen debut of Elizabeth Taylor; he was also a stitch as the resourceful detective in Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin' (1941). From 1943 through 1952, Herbert starred in 23 two-reelers at Columbia Pictures, which were popular at the time but in retrospect represent a low point for the actor. Columbia director Edward Bernds has observed that Herbert considered these shorts beneath his talents, which may account for his listless performance in most of them. Throughout his Columbia stay, Herbert made scattered feature-film appearances, the best of which was in Preston Sturges' The Beautiful Blonde of Bashful Bend (1949). Hugh Herbert died a of heart attack shortly after completing his final Columbia short, A Gink at the Sink (1952); he was preceded in death by his brother, movie bit player Tom Herbert.

Trivia: Harry Davenport was descended from a long and illustrious line of stage actors who could trace their heritage to famed 18th-century Irish thespian Jack Johnson. Davenport made his own stage bow at the age of five, racking up a list of theatrical credits that eventually would fill two pages of Equity magazine. He started his film career at the age of 48, co-starring with Rose Tapley as "Mr. and Mrs. Jarr" in a series of silent comedy shorts. He also directed several silent features in the pre-World War I era. Most of his film activity was in the sound era, with such rich characterizations as Dr. Mead in Gone With the Wind (1939) and Louis XI in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) to his credit. He also essayed a few leading film roles, notably as a lovable hermit in the 1946 PRC programmer The Enchanted Forest. At the time of his final screen performance in Frank Capra's Riding High (1950), much was made in the press of the fact that this film represented Davenport's seventy-eighth year in show business. Married twice, Harry Davenport was the father of actors Arthur Rankin and Dorothy Davenport.

Trivia: The quintessential dumb, buxom blonde, Marie Wilson was born in Anaheim, CA, then moved with her family to Hollywood after the death of her father. She received her first screen role as Mary Quite Contrary in the Laurel and Hardy version of Babes in Toyland (1934), through the auspices of her then-husband, writer/director Nick Grinde. Signed to a Warner Bros. contract, Wilson cemented her scatterbrained reputation in such films as Satan Met a Lady (1936) and Boy Meets Girl (1938). In 1944, she was hired by Ken Murray to perform a comedy striptease in Murray's Hollywood stage revue Blackouts; the engagement lasted five years and 2,332 performances. In 1947, Wilson starred in the radio sitcom "My Friend Irma," which led to two theatrical films (the first of which introduced Martin and Lewis to the moviegoing audience) and a TV series. Her open, grinning face belying her age, Wilson continued doing her dumb-blonde act into the 1960s, starring in summer stock and dinner-theater productions of Born Yesterday and appearing in commercials. Marie Wilson's last TV assignment was a voice-over role in the 1970 animated cartoon series Where's Huddles?; two years later, she died of cancer at the age of 56.

Trivia: Nightclub comedian and character actor, onscreen from 1943.

Trivia: The daughter of actress Martha Daniels, Connie Gilchrist was herself on stage from the age of 16, touring both Europe and the U.S. Her theatrical credits include such long-runners as Mulatto and Ladies and Gentlemen, the latter featuring a contemporary of Gilchrist's named Helen Hayes. While acting in the pre-Broadway tour of Ladies and Gentlemen in 1939, Gilchrist was signed to a ten-year contract at MGM, where amidst the studio's patented gloss and glitter, the actress' brash, down-to-earth characterizations brought a welcome touch of urban reality. Usually cast as Irish maids, tenement housewives and worldly madams (though seldom designated as such), Gilchrist was given a rare chance to show off her musical talents in Presenting Lily Mars, where she sang a duet with Judy Garland. After her MGM tenure, Gilchrist free-lanced in such films as Houdini (1953), Auntie Mame (1958) (as governess Nora Muldoon) and The Monkey's Uncle (1965). Devoted TV fans will recall Connie Gilchrist as the bawdy pubkeeper Purity on the 1950s Australian-filmed adventure series Long John Silver.

Trivia: The daughter of actor-manager Samuel Rupert Woods and actress Lillie Roberts, Ethel Griffies began her own stage career at the age of 3. Griffies was 21 when she finally made her London debut in 1899, and 46 when she made her first Broadway appearance in Havoc (1924). Discounting a tentative stab at filmmaking in 1917, she made her movie bow in 1930, repeating her stage role in Old English (1930). Habitually cast as a crotchety old lady with the proverbial golden heart, she alternated between bits and prominently featured roles for the next 35 years. Her larger parts included Grace Poole in both the 1935 and 1944 versions of Jane Eyre, and the vituperous matron who accuses Tippi Hedren of being a harbinger of doom in Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). Every so often, she'd take a sabbatical from film work to concentrate on the stage; she made her last Broadway appearance in 1967, at which time she was England's oldest working actress. Presumably at the invitation of fellow Briton Arthur Treacher, Ethel Griffies was a frequent guest on TV's Merv Griffin Show in the late 1960s, never failing to bring down the house with her wickedly witty comments on her 80 years in show business.

Trivia: Ava Gardner began her career first as a model, then as a contract player at MGM, where her gawky, unsophisticated demeanor was totally made over by the studio into an image of inaccessible glamour. Gardner toiled in tiny bit roles, finally getting a worthwhile one on loan-out to Universal in The Killers (1946). MGM was never very comfortable with the bad-girl persona she displayed so well in this film, and, thus, most of her starring appearances at her home studio were relatively sympathetic roles in The Hucksters (1947) and Show Boat (1951). Her cinema reputation as The World's Most Beautiful Animal (in the words of a '50s publicity campaign) was once again manifested in loan-out movies like Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) and The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952). MGM eventually came to terms with the elements that made Gardner popular, notably in the gutsy Mogambo (1953), in which she made an excellent partner to the equally earthy Clark Gable. Director George Cukor was much taken by Gardner and cast the actress in her best and most complex MGM role in Bhowani Junction (1956), in which she was torn not only by love but also clashing East Indian cultural values. Gardner was equally well served in The Barefoot Contessa (1954), which, in many ways, was a replay of her own rags-to-riches personal story. The actress was cast in some of her best parts during the '60s, notably in Seven Days in May and Night of the Iguana (both 1964), but the pace of her jet-setting lifestyle and increasing personal problems began to show. With roles and public appearances steadily decreasing, she died on January 25, 1990. She was married and divorced three times -- to Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, and Artie Shaw.