Trivia: American actor Rock Hudson was born Roy Scherer, adopting the last name Fitzgerald when his mother remarried in the mid-'30s. A popular but academically unspectacular student at New Trier High School in Winnetka, IL, he decided at some point during his high school years to become an actor, although a wartime stint in the Navy put these plans on hold. Uninspiring postwar jobs as a moving man, postman, telephone company worker, and truck driver in his new home of California only fueled his desire to break into movies, which was accomplished after he had professional photos of himself taken and sent out to the various studios. A few dead-end interviews later, he took drama lessons; his teacher advised him to find a shorter name if he hoped to become a star, and, after rejecting Lance and Derek, he chose Rock ("Hudson" was inspired by the automobile of that name). Signed by Universal-International, Hudson was immediately loaned to Warner Bros. for his first film, Fighter Squadron (1948); despite director Raoul Walsh's predictions of stardom for the young actor, Hudson did the usual contract player bits, supporting roles, and villain parts when he returned to Universal. A good part in Winchester '73 (1950) led to better assignments, and the studio chose to concentrate its publicity on Hudson's physical attributes rather than his acting ability, which may explain why the actor spent an inordinate amount of screen time with his shirt off. A favorite of teen-oriented fan magazines, Hudson ascended to stardom, his films gradually reaching the A-list category with such important releases as Magnificent Obsession (1954) and Battle Hymn (1957). Director George Stevens cast Hudson in one of his best roles, Bick Benedict, in the epic film Giant (1956), and critics finally decided that, since Hudson not only worked well with such dramatic league leaders as Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean -- but frequently outacted them in Giant -- he deserved better, less condescending reviews. Hudson's career took a giant leap forward in 1959 when he was cast in Pillow Talk, the first of several profitable co-starring gigs with Doris Day. Once again taken for granted by the mid-'60s, Hudson turned in another first-rate performance as a middle-aged man given a newer, younger body in the mordant fantasy film Seconds (1966). A longtime television holdout, Hudson finally entered the weekly video race in 1971 with the popular detective series McMillan and Wife, co-starring Susan Saint James, and appeared on the prime time soap opera Dynasty in the early '80s. Regarded by his co-workers as a good sport, hard worker, and all-around nice guy, Hudson endured a troubled private life; though the studio flacks liked to emphasize his womanizing, Hudson was, in reality, a homosexual. This had been hinted at for years by the Hollywood underground, but it was only in the early '80s that Hudson confirmed the rumors by announcing that he had contracted the deadly AIDS virus. Staunchly defended by friends, fans, and co-workers, Rock Hudson lived out the remainder of his life with dignity, withstanding the ravages of his illness, the intrusions of the tabloid press, and the less than tasteful snickerings of the judgmental and misinformed. It was a testament to his courage -- and a tragedy in light of his better film work -- that Hudson will be principally remembered as the first star of his magnitude to go public with details of his battle with AIDS. He died in 1985.

Trivia: Born Sarah Jane Fulks, Jane Wyman tried to break into films as a child but was unsuccessful despite encouragement from her mother. A decade later, she began her show business career as a radio singer, using the name Jane Durrell. In 1936, she began appearing in films as a chorus girl and bit player. Eventually, she moved into secondary roles and occasional leads, usually playing brassy blondes in comic relief. She broke out of this mold with her performance in The Lost Weekend (1945), in which she demonstrated her talents as a serious actress; this led to better roles as a major star. For her work in The Yearling (1946), she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination, then won an Oscar for her portrayal of a deaf-mute rape victim in Johnny Belinda (1948). She went on to star in many films, demonstrating her versatility in both comedies and tearjerkers. She was twice more nominated for Oscars, for The Blue Veil (1951) and Magnificent Obsession (1954). After 1956, her screen work was infrequent. She returned from retirement in the early '80s to play a regular role on the TV series Falcon Crest. From 1940 to 1948, she was married to Ronald Reagan; their daughter, Maureen Reagan, was a singer-actress. After a long period of inactivity, Wyman died at age 93 in early September 2007.

Trivia: Fresh out of the University of California, sprightly Colorado-born actress Barbara Rush attended the Pasadena Playhouse, walking several miles to and from her classes to save up enough money for her tuition. Before launching her film career, she married actor Jeffrey Hunter, the first of two desultory unions. She became a favorite of little boys of all ages due to her leading-lady stints in two of the most influential science fiction films of the 1950s, When Worlds Collide (1951) and It Came From Outer Space (1953). After biding her time in idiotic programmers like Prince of Pirates (1953), she emerged as an A-list leading lady at the major studios, adept at both comedy (Oh Men! Oh Women! [1957]) and drama (The Young Lions [1958]). Easing into character parts in the 1960s, Rush was often cast as viper-tongued shrews, cheating wives, and abrasive alcoholics. She also surprised many of her fans by appearing as "special guest villain" Nora Clavicle on an outrageous 1968 episode of Batman, which proposed that the miniskirted policewomen of Gotham City could be cowed into submission simply by releasing mice into the community. Though she hasn't been seen in many films in later years, Barbara Rush has continued to flourish as a stage actress and TV guest star.

Trivia: At age three Agnes Moorehead first appeared onstage, and at 11 she made her professional debut in the ballet and chorus of the St. Louis Opera. As a teenager she regularly sang on local radio. She earned a Ph.D. in literature and studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She began playing small roles on Broadway in 1928; shortly thereafter she shifted her focus to radio acting, becoming a regular on the radio shows March of Time, Cavalcade of America, and a soap opera series. She toured in vaudeville from 1933-36 with Phil Baker. In 1940 she joined Orson Welles's Mercury Theater Company, giving a great boost to her career. Moorehead debuted onscreen as Kane's mother in Welles' film Citizen Kane (1941). Her second film was Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination; ultimately she was nominated for an Oscars five times, never winning. In films, she tended to play authoritarian, neurotic, puritanical, or soured women, but also played a wide range of other roles, and was last onscreen in 1972. In the '50s she toured the U.S. with a stellar cast giving dramatic readings of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell. In 1954 she began touring in The Fabulous Redhead, a one-woman show she eventually took to over 200 cities across the world. She was also active on TV; later audiences remember her best as the witch Endora, Elizabeth Montgomery's mother, in the '60s TV sitcom Bewitched. Moorehead's last professional engagement was in the Broadway musical Gigi. She died of lung cancer in 1974. She was married to actors John Griffith Lee (1930-52) and Robert Gist (1953-58).

Trivia: Erudite, silver-haired stage and screen actor Otto Kruger was a grandnephew of South African president Ohm Kruger. While attending the University of Michigan and Columbia University, Kruger switched his field of interest from music to acting. After several seasons in regional theatre, the 30-year-old Kruger made his Broadway bow in The Natural Law in 1915. That same year, he appeared in his first film, but did not actively pursue moviemaking until the talkie era. Kruger often exploited his respectable, sophisticated veneer to play villainous roles, such as the solid citizen-cum-Nazi ringleader in Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942). He was equally effective in parts calling for kindness and compassion, notably as Dr. Emil Behring, the real-life Nobel Prize winner, in Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet. During World War II, Kruger, an ardent home gardener, worked as a food coordinator for the Los Angeles Country Agricultural Department. While appearing in the pre-Broadway tryouts for Advise and Consent in 1960, Kruger suffered the first of several strokes that would eventually render him inactive. Otto Kruger made his last film, Sex and the Single Girl, in 1964; he died 10 years later, on his 89th birthday.

Trivia: Gregg Palmer started out as a radio disc jockey, billed under his given name of Palmer Lee. He launched his film career in 1950, usually appearing in Westerns and crime melodramas. During the 1950s, he could most often be seen in such inexpensive sci-fi fare as A Creature Walks Among Us (1956) and Zombies of Moro Tau. Before his retirement in 1983, Gregg Palmer logged in a great many TV credits, including a 13-week stint as a Chicago gunman named Harry in Run Buddy Run (1966).

Trivia: British actor Paul Cavanagh came to films in 1928 after extensive stage experience. In Hollywood from 1930, the elegant, trimly mustached Cavanagh occasionally played leads, notably as Maureen O'Sullivan's suitor in Tarzan and His Mate (1934). For the most part he was seen in stiff-upper-lip supporting roles, often cast as a society villain, noble cuckolded husband or military official. As much in demand at the big studios as he was at the poverty-row independents, Paul Cavanagh remained active until 1959, when he appeared in his last picture, the low-budget horror film Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake.

Trivia: American general-purpose actor George Lynn played scores of younger characters in Hollywood film during World War II, sometimes billing himself Peter Lynn and George Peter Lynn, a fact that makes tracking his many screen credits something of an ordeal. He was George Peter Lynn as Professor Fisher in the Republic serial Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), George Lynn as the heavy in Laurel & Hardy's A-Haunting We Will Go (1943), and Peter Lynn as a reporter in Suddenly It's Spring (1947). To confuse matters even further, the actor used his real name, George M. Lynn, playing bit parts in Something to Live For (1952) and The Bushwackers (1952). Lynn also guest-starred on television shows such as The Lone Ranger and Adventures of Rin Tin Tin.

Trivia: Born in Germany, Anders was billed under his given name of Rudolph Amendt when he made his American screen bow in Stamboul Quest (1934). He became "Robert O. Davis" for such roles as Franz Joseph in Champagne Waltz (1937) and "His Excellency" in the 1941 serial King of the Texas Rangers. During the war years, when character actors with Germanic names became bankable commodities, he settled upon "Rudolph Anders," and remained so until his retirement in 1964. Anders flourished in sinister roles, often playing Nazis or communist spies. In the early 1950s, he was seen as Teutonic scientists in the sci-fiers Phantom from Space (1953) and The Snow Creature (1954). And on TV, he played Dr. Von Meter on the kiddie serial Space Patrol. Rudolph Anders was back at work for Der Fatherland as a Nazi doctor in his final film, 36 Hours (1964).

Trivia: A distinguished stage and screen actor from Austria (born Johan Mylong-Münz), John Mylong was one in a score of European actors cast as Middle European types in Hollywood wartime melodramas. In the U.S. from 1941, when he starred in the New York Theatre Guild's production of Somewhere in France, Mylong later played Colonel Duval in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), the duplicitous General Halder in The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler (1943), Von Bülow in Hotel Berlin (1945), and Kaiser Wilhelm in Annie Get Your Gun (1950). Equally busy on television, Mylong played the casino manager in the "Lucy Goes to Monte Carlo" episode of I Love Lucy and also appeared on Black Saddle and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Trivia: The son of actress Nan Kelly Yorke, Jack Kelly was the younger brother of stage and film star Nancy Kelly. Like Nancy, Jack was a professional from an early age, acting in radio and on stage before the age of 10, and in films from 1937 (he is quite prominent in a brace of 1939 20th Century-Fox films, Young Mr. Lincoln and The Story of Alexander Graham Bell). He reemerged as a leading man in the early 1950s, appearing in such films as Forbidden Planet (1956, as the ill-fated Lieutenant Farnam). Signed by Warner Bros. in 1955, Kelly starred as Dr. Paris Mitchell in the weekly TV version of the 1942 film King's Row. He went on to play gamblin' man Bart Maverick on the longer-running Warners western series Maverick. Though his popularity never matched that of his co-star James Garner, Kelly still developed a fan following as Bart; he remained with the series from 1957 until its cancellation in 1962, appearing opposite such Garner successors as Roger Moore and Robert Colbert. Kelly dabbled in a little bit of everything after that: hosting the anthology series NBC Comedy Playhouse (1973), emceeing the game show Sale of the Century (1969-71), and playing hard-nosed Lt. Ryan on the Teresa Graves series Get Christie Love (1974) and Harry Hammond on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (1977-79). He revived the Bart Maverick character on 1978's The New Maverick and the 1990 TV movie The Gambler Returns: Luck of the Draw. Chances are that, had he lived, Jack Kelly would have been invited to co-star again with Garner in the 1994 Mel Gibson theatrical-feature version of Maverick.

Trivia: A dancer at Los Angeles' Biltmore Hotel, Lisa Gaye (née Griffin) signed with Universal-International in 1953 and played a standard leading-lady role in Drums Across the River (1954). She also did such typical '50s genre pictures as Rock Around the Clock (1956) and Shake, Rattle and Rock (1957), but was busier on television, where she appeared on The Bob Cummings Show and the popular series Death Valley Days and Perry Mason. Gaye, who is the sister of former leading ladies Debra Paget, Teala Loring and Ruell Shayne, left show business in the '60s to raise her family. She should not be confused with the later cult star of the same name.

Trivia: The sun rose and set on American leading man Lance Fuller's film career during the decade of the 1950s. From Cattle Queen of Montana (1954) onward, Fuller seemed most at home in westerns. Surprisingly, Fuller was never tapped for a regular role in one of the many TV westerns of the era, though he kept busy in guest-star assignments. Lance Fuller's best screen role was as Jim Leslie in the watered-down filmization of Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre (1958); a possible runner-up was his portrayal of a slimy fortune hunter in producer Alex Gordon's Voodoo Woman (1957).

Trivia: Of Danish-German descent, brunette Myrna Hansen was voted Miss Photo Flash of 1953 and, that same year, became Miss USA. Along with the Miss Universe contestants, Hansen briefly graced Universal's The All-American (1953) and was awarded a contract. She played pretty girls throughout the decade without ever persuading anyone that she could act. Hansen later appeared on such television shows as Petticoat Junction and Green Acres.

Trivia: Made his screen debut in a 2001 episode of The Bill. In 2005, nominated for the Manchester Evening News Best Studio Performer Award for his role in Private Peaceful. In 2007, nominated by The Stage as Best Solo Performer in Private Peaceful. Starred as Vindice in a 2016 production of The Revenger's Tragedy. Nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 2018 Offies for his role in Br-er Cotton.

Trivia: American actor Lee Roberts spent most of his time in Westerns and actioners. Roberts essayed roles of all sizes in such films as the Trail Blazers series at Monogram and the Lash LaRue and Eddie Dean vehicles at PRC. Over at Republic, he showed up with regularity in the studio's serial product. Lee Roberts remained in films until the late '50s, playing the leading role in Hollywood's final serial effort, Columbia's Blazing the Overland Trail (1956).

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from 1937.

Trivia: A mustachioed supporting player from Russia, Jack Chefe (sometimes credited as Chefé) played exactly what he looked and sounded like: headwaiters. That was also his occupation when not appearing in films, of which he did literally hundreds between 1932 and 1959, serving such stars as Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey, 1936), Jeanette MacDonald (Bitter Sweet, 1940), Bob Hope (My Favorite Brunette, 1947), and even Dick Tracy (in the 1945 RKO feature film). Once in a while, Chefe managed to escape typecasting, playing one of the legionnaires in Laurel and Hardy's Flying Deuces (1939) and a croupier in The Big Sleep (1946).

Trivia: A nightclub dancer in her teens, Mae Clarke rose to prominence on the Broadway musical stage of the 1920s. In films, Clarke nearly always seemed predestined for tragedy and abuse: she played the long-suffering bride of the title character in Frankenstein (1931), the self-sacrificing trollop Molly Molloy in The Front Page (1931), and the streetwalker protagonist in Waterloo Bridge (1931). Clarke's most famous film role was one for which she received no onscreen credit: she was the recipient of James Cagney's legendary "grapefruit massage" in 1931's Public Enemy. Clarke went on to co-star with Cagney in such films as Lady Killer (1933) and Great Guy (1936); though the best of friends in real life, Cagney and Clarke usually seemed poised to bash each other's brains out onscreen. For reasons that still remain unclear, Clarke's starring career plummeted into bit roles and walk-ons by the 1950s. Her most rewarding work during that decade was on television -- it was Clarke who portrayed a middle-aged woman undergoing menopause on a controversial 1954 installment of the TV anthology Medic. Even during her career low points, Clarke retained her sense of humor. When applying for a role on one TV program, she advertised herself as a comedian, listing as a "qualification" the fact that she was at one time married to Fanny Brice's brother. Mae Clarke continued accepting minor film roles until 1970, when she retired to the Motion Picture Country Home at Woodland Hills, California.