Trivia: Few would argue with the opinion that American entertainer Fred Astaire was the greatest dancer ever seen on film. Born to a wealthy Omaha family, young Astaire was trained at the Alvienne School of Dance and the Ned Wayburn School of Dancing. In a double act with his sister Adele, Fred danced in cabarets, vaudeville houses, and music halls all over the world before he was 20. The Astaires reportedly made their film bow in a 1917 Mary Pickford vehicle, same year of their first major Broadway success, Over the Top. The two headlined one New York stage hit after another in the 1920s, their grace and sophistication spilling into their social life, in which they hobnobbed with literary and theatrical giants, as well as millionaires and European royalty. When Adele married the British Lord Charles Cavendish in 1931, Fred found himself soloing for the first time in his life. As with many other Broadway luminaries, Astaire was beckoned to Hollywood, where legend has it his first screen test was dismissed with "Can't act; slightly bald; can dance a little." He danced more than a little in his first film, Dancing Lady (1933), though he didn't actually play a role and was confined to the production numbers. Later that year, Astaire was cast as comic/dancing relief in the RKO musical Flying Down to Rio, which top-billed Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond. Astaire was billed fifth, just below the film's female comedy relief Ginger Rogers. Spending most of the picture trading wisecracks while the "real" stars wooed each other, Astaire and Rogers did a very brief dance during a production number called "The Carioca." As it turned out, Flying Down to Rio was an enormous moneymaker -- in fact, it was the film that saved the studio from receivership. Fans of the film besieged the studio with demands to see more of those two funny people who danced in the middle of the picture. RKO complied with 1934's The Gay Divorcee, based on one of Astaire's Broadway hits. Supporting no one this time, Fred and Ginger were the whole show as they sang and danced their way through such Cole Porter hits as "Night and Day" and the Oscar-winning "The Continental." Astaire and Rogers were fast friends, but both yearned to be appreciated as individuals rather than a part of a team. After six films with Rogers, Astaire finally got a chance to work as a single in Damsel in Distress (1937), which, despite a superb George Gershwin score and top-notch supporting cast, was a box-office disappointment, leading RKO to re-team him with Rogers in Carefree (1938). After The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), Astaire decided to go solo again, and, after a few secondary films, he found the person he would later insist was his favorite female co-star, Rita Hayworth, with whom he appeared in You'll Never Get Rich (1942) and You Were Never Lovelier (1946). Other partners followed, including Lucille Bremer, Judy Garland, Betty Hutton, Jane Powell, Cyd Charisse, and Barrie Chase, but, in the minds of moviegoers, Astaire would forever be linked with Ginger Rogers -- even though a re-teaming in The Barkeleys of Broadway (1949) seemed to prove how much they didn't need each other. Astaire set himself apart from other musical performers by insisting that he be photographed full-figure, rather than have his numbers "improved" by tricky camera techniques or unnecessary close-ups. And unlike certain venerable performers who found a specialty early in life and never varied from it, Astaire's dancing matured with him. He was in his fifties in such films as The Band Wagon (1953) and Funny Face (1957), but he had adapted his style so that he neither drew attention to his age nor tried to pretend to be any younger than he was. Perhaps his most distinctive characteristic was making it look so easy. One seldom got the impression that Astaire worked hard to get his effects, although, of course, he did. To the audience, it seemed as though he was doing it for the first time and making it up as he went along. With the exceptions of his multi-Emmy-award-winning television specials of the late '50s and early '60s, Astaire cut down on his dancing in the latter stages of his career to concentrate on straight acting. While he was superb as a troubled, suicidal scientist in On the Beach (1959) and was nominated for an Oscar for his work in The Towering Inferno (1974), few of his later films took full advantage of his acting abilities. (By 1976, he was appearing in such films as The Amazing Dobermans.) In 1981, more than a decade after he last danced in public, Astaire was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. While this award was usually bestowed upon personalities who had no work left in them, Astaire remained busy as an actor almost until his death in 1987. The same year as his AFI prize, Astaire joined fellow show business veterans Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and John Houseman in the movie thriller Ghost Story.

Trivia: "When you've danced with Cyd Charisse, you stay danced with." So said Fred Astaire, in tribute to the ability and allure of his last big-screen dancing partner. Cyd Charisse was the last great musical star to come out of MGM, and she barely made it to stardom before the musical genre began its decline. One of the greatest dancers ever to come out of Hollywood, Charisse worked in movies for almost a decade before being allowed to take center stage in a major musical feature; but when she did, she fairly exploded onscreen in The Band Wagon, Vincente Minnelli's greatest musical.Charisse was born in Tula Ellice Finklea in Amarillo, TX, and took to dancing at an early age, encouraged by her father, who loved the ballet. By age 14, she was dancing with the Ballet Russe under the more glamorous (and European-sounding) name Felia Sidorova -- the Sidorova came from her childhood nickname "Sid," which she carried into adulthood. She later studied dance in Los Angeles with Nico Charisse, who became her first husband. Charisse appeared both solo and with her first husband (working as "Nico and Charisse") in several early '40s "soundies" and played small roles in Mission to Moscow and Something to Shout About (both 1943), working under the name Lily Norwood. In 1945 Charisse was signed to MGM; Lily Norwood disappeared and Sid became Cyd, while the Charisse -- the one major legacy of the failed marriage -- remained. Charisse appeared in some lesser studio productions during the second half of the '40s, of which the most notable was The Unfinished Dance, a notoriously bad MGM remake of a pre-World War II French film. At the time, Ann Miller was getting all of the really good high-profile dancer co-star roles in the studio's biggest songbook musicals, while Charisse got featured dancer roles in composer-tribute movies such as Till the Clouds Roll By (based loosely on the career of Jerome Kern) and Words and Music (based loosely on Richard Rodgers' and Lorenz Hart's careers). During the late '40s, she married singer Tony Martin, a union that would last more than 50 years. Charisse had the chance to work opposite Gene Kelly in An American in Paris, but turned it down as she and Martin were starting a family, a decision that she never regretted, even if it cheated film audiences of a brilliant showcase for her work. Finally, in 1952, she made it into a frontline studio production in as prominent a role as a dancer could possibly have without dialogue, playing the vamp who appears in the middle of the "Broadway Ballet" segment of Singin' in the Rain.In 1953, with the help of Fred Astaire and director Vincente Minnelli, Charisse emerged a full-blown star in The Band Wagon. The movie, one of the greatest musicals ever made, was even more impressive as a total vehicle for Charisse -- her eight years at the studio had allowed her to absorb a fair amount of acting training, which made her just as impressive in her dramatic, romantic, and comedic scenes as she was when she danced. And when she and Astaire danced, it was literally poetry in motion, before that phrase was overused. Charisse got to work alongside Gene Kelly again in Brigadoon and It's Always Fair Weather, in which she again got to showcase her acting ability (her singing was dubbed by vocalist India Adams in most of her movies). She got to do one more major Hollywood musical, Silk Stockings (1957), acting and dancing opposite her greatest dancing partner, Fred Astaire, in a screen adaptation of Cole Porter's last great stage musical, before the musical genre disappeared. During the 1960s, she moved her career to Europe for one last dazzling musical film, Black Tights, and onto television, where Charisse became an Emmy-winning performer, and then onto the stage. Luckily for Charisse, she was a good enough actress to credibly work in straight drama and comedy, and was so striking a physical presence that she kept her career going well into the 1970s, including a successful nightclub act with Tony Martin. She scored a hit in the Australian production of No No Nanette in 1972, and she and Martin authored a joint-autobiography, The Two of Us, in 1976. Charisse published a successful workout book in the early '90s, and remains one of the most beloved performers from the world of Hollywood musicals. In 2000, she received the first Nijinsky Award from Princess Caroline of Monaco for her lifelong contribution to dance.

Trivia: American singer/actress Janis Paige was singing in public from age 5 in local amateur shows. Journeying from her native Washington to Los Angeles after high school, Paige secured a job as vocalist at the Hollywood Canteen, a studio-sponsored gathering spot for servicemen. It was only logical, then, that her first feature film upon being signed by Warner Bros. would be Hollywood Canteen (1944). A few musicals aside, Paige didn't get to sing much in her subsequent films, appearing mostly as ingenues and second leads. She left for Broadway in 1950, where she scored a hit in the popular comedy-mystery Remains to Be Seen, in which she costarred with then-husband Jackie Cooper. A few seasons later, Paige enjoyed her biggest hit in the Tony-Winning musical comedy The Pajama Game. Back in Hollywood, Paige watched as her stage roles went to bigger actresses (the star of the filmization of Pajama Game was her old rival at Warners, Doris Day), but she managed to secure one memorable movie role as an Esther Williams-like aquatic movie star in 1957's Silk Stockings. Janis was permitted one strong number, "Stereophonic Sound," with costar Fred Astaire, and copped most of the film's laughs as she slapped herself in the head to get the water out of her ears during interviews. The actress was a fixture of television from the early '50s onward, starring in the sitcom It's Always Jan and featured in recurring roles on such series as Eight is Enough, Trapper John MD, and Lanigan's Rabbi. Perhaps her most conspicuous prime-time TV role was as the waitress who conducted a brief affair with Archie Bunker on All in the Family. Daytime TV fans have been treated to Paige's talents on such serials as General Hospital, Capitol, and Santa Barbara, while devotees of summer stock theatre will remember the actress as star of straw-hat productions of Gypsy and Pajama Game in the '60s. As busy off-camera as on, Janis Paige was the founder of the Sunset Plaza Civic Association; and after the death of her composer husband Ray Gilbert (who penned "Zip-i-dee-Doo-Dah"), Paige was placed in charge of Gilbert's Ipanema Music Company.

Trivia: With the possible exception of Edward G. Robinson, no actor has so often been the target of impressionists as the inimitable, Hungarian-born Peter Lorre. Leaving his family home at the age of 17, Lorre sought out work as an actor, toiling as a bank clerk during down periods. He went the starving-artist route in Switzerland and Austria before settling in Germany, where he became a favorite of playwright Bertolt Brecht. For most of his first seven years as a professional actor, Lorre employed his familiar repertoire of wide eyes, toothy grin, and nasal voice to invoke laughs rather than shudders. In fact, he was appearing in a stage comedy at the same time that he was filming his breakthrough picture M (1931), in which he was cast as a sniveling child murderer. When Hitler ascended to power in 1933, Lorre fled to Paris, and then to London, where he appeared in his first English-language film, Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Although the monolingual Lorre had to learn his lines phonetically for Hitchcock, he picked up English fairly rapidly, and, by 1935, was well equipped both vocally and psychologically to take on Hollywood. On the strength of M, Lorre was initially cast in roles calling for varying degrees of madness, such as the love-obsessed surgeon in Mad Love (1935) and the existentialist killer in Crime and Punishment (1935). Signed to a 20th Century Fox contract in 1936, Lorre asked for and received a chance to play a good guy for a change. He starred in eight installments of the Mr. Moto series, playing an ever-polite (albeit well versed in karate) Japanese detective. When the series folded in 1939, Lorre freelanced in villainous roles at several studios. While under contract to Warner Bros., Lorre played effeminate thief Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon (1941), launching an unofficial series of Warner films in which Lorre was teamed with his Falcon co-star Sidney Greenstreet. During this period, Lorre's co-workers either adored or reviled him for his wicked sense of humor and bizarre on-set behavior. As far as director Jean Negulesco was concerned, Lorre was the finest actor in Hollywood; Negulesco fought bitterly with the studio brass for permission to cast Lorre as the sympathetic leading man in The Mask of Dimitrios (1946), in which the diminutive actor gave one of his finest and subtlest performances. In 1951, Lorre briefly returned to Germany, where he directed and starred in the intriguing (if not wholly successful) postwar psychological drama The Lost One. The '50s were a particularly busy time for Lorre; he performed frequently on such live television anthologies as Climax; guested on comedy and variety shows; and continued to appear in character parts in films. He remained a popular commodity into the '60s, especially after co-starring with the likes of Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Basil Rathbone in a series of tongue-in-cheek Edgar Allan Poe adaptations for filmmaker Roger Corman. Lorre's last film, completed just a few months before his fatal heart attack in 1964, was Jerry Lewis' The Patsy, in which, ironically, the dourly demonic Lorre played a director of comedy films.

Trivia: An American comedian with hang-dog eyes, Jules Munshin began his career singing, dancing, and telling jokes in the Catskill resorts. He later switched to vaudeville, which led him to Broadway, where in 1946, he became a star after starring in the musical Call Me Mister. During the late '40s, he began appearing in MGM musicals. His most memorable role was playing one of the three carefree sailors on leave in On the Town (1949). Munshin then resumed his stage career, and only infrequently returned to films.

Trivia: Actor Joseph Buloff left his native Eastern Europe in 1927 and came to the U.S. There he appeared in over 225 Yiddish plays until 1936 when he made his Broadway debut. He made his film debut in 1940 in Let's Make Music.

Trivia: Average in looks but above average in talent, New York native George Tobias launched his acting career at his hometown's Pasadena Playhouse. He then spent several years with the Provincetown Players before moving on to Broadway and, ultimately, Hollywood. Entering films in 1939, Tobias' career shifted into first when he was signed by Warner Bros., where he played everything from good-hearted truck drivers to shifty-eyed bandits. Tobias achieved international fame in the 1960s by virtue of his weekly appearances as long-suffering neighbor Abner Kravitz on the TV sitcom Bewitched; he'd previously been a regular on the obscure Canadian adventure series Hudson's Bay. Though he frequently portrayed browbeaten husbands, George Tobias was a lifelong bachelor.

Trivia: Born in England, Gladys Lyne Jepson-Turner, aka Belita was a professional skater from childhood. A star at 14, Belita toured the U.S. at 15, then settled into a long run as the main attraction of the Ice Capades--which was also the title of her first film. While at Monogram in the mid-1940s, Belita was given plenty of opportunities to skate, but also spent an inordinate amount of time in glum film noir efforts like Suspense (1946) and The Gangster (1947). Belita pursued her film career on a limited basis throughout the 1950s, appearing in such musicals as Invitation to the Dance (1956) and Silk Stockings (1957).

Trivia: Hollywood character actor Ivan Triesault was born in Estonia where he began a theatrical career at age 14. Four years later, he moved to the U.S. where he began formal training in acting and dance in New York and later, in London. Back in New York, he frequently appeared as a mime and dancer on the Radio City Music Hall stage. Following more theatrical acting experience, including a brief stint on Broadway, Triesault broke into films where he usually played foreign villains from the mid-'40s through the early '60s.

Trivia: Barrie Chase entered movies professionally in the second half of the 1950s, and was the last performer to achieve stardom as a dancer for the next two decades -- until Debbie Allen came along. The daughter of screenwriter and novelist Borden Chase, Barrie was born in 1934 in New York, before her father had made his move to Hollywood (and, in fact, before he was Borden Chase). Her mother was the pianist Lee Keith. Raised in California after her father entered the movie business, she attended the Westlake School and thought there was little special about working in movies. Her main interest from the age of three was dancing and athletics, including swimming, and while still a student at a local ballet school (and barely into her teens), she was picked out of a group of girls to appear in a dance sequence in the MGM Technicolor swashbuckler Scaramouche (1952). The experience left her unimpressed and she ultimately settled on dancing as a career, but her shy nature prevented Chase from pursuing it too diligently. She turned up in the Goldwyn production of Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and the dream sequence in Daddy Long Legs (1955), where she first worked (albeit very briefly) with Fred Astaire. It was director/producer Dick Powell who first took note of Chase and pulled her out of the chorus in The Conqueror and gave her a small role in You Can't Run Away From It (both 1956), his musical remake of It Happened One Night. She was then back in the chorus for the Fred Astaire/Cyd Charisse vehicle Silk Stockings when choreographer Jack Cole came to her and said that Astaire wanted to meet with her. The veteran actor/dancer/singer was preparing his first network television special, An Evening With Fred Astaire. The performing legend was so pleased with the results that he invited Chase to work with him on his next special; in effect, she became Astaire's last dancing partner in a series of broadcasts that were seen by tens of millions. She did a stage act in Las Vegas that was choreographed by no less a figure than Hermes Pan, and 20th Century Fox used her in a short sequence in Mardi Gras (1958) with Pat Boone. After that, she was offered a seven-year contract, which Chase accepted, and she next worked in Can-Can (1960). Alas, Chase had the bad fortune to come to Hollywood just at the point when dancers were becoming unnecessary to most of the productions. She was in The George Raft Story (1961), starring Ray Danton, and that was all she did that year. It fell to Gregory Peck, who had seen her on television, to request Chase for a small part in Cape Fear (1962); Stanley Kramer also used her for a dance number involving Dick Shawn in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). She was in a dream sequence -- and, for all of that, was the only woman in the movie -- in Robert Aldrich's adventure film The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), and did occasional television work, including an episode of Bonanza entitled "The Ballerina," written by her actor/screenwriter brother Frank Chase. She left movies later in the '60s after marrying a wealthy medical entrepreneur, but reappeared in the public eye briefly in the late '70s, when John Travolta -- after watching some of Astaire's TV specials -- approached her about working with him during the making of Grease (1978).

Trivia: Many research sources arbitrarily begin the list of French actor Eugene Borden's films in 1936. In fact, Borden first showed up on screen as early as 1917. Seldom afforded billing, the actor was nonetheless instantly recognizable in his many appearances as headwaiters, porters, pursers and coachmen. Along with several other stalwart European character actors, Borden was cast in a sizeable role in the above-average Columbia "B" So Dark the Night (1946). Musical buffs will recall Eugene Borden as Gene Kelly and Oscar Levant's landlord in An American in Paris (1951).

Trivia: In films from 1938's Tenth Avenue Kid, American actor Paul Bryar remained a durable character player for over thirty years, usually in police uniform. Among his screen credits were Follow Me Quietly (1949), Dangerous When Wet (1952), Inside Detroit (1955) and The Killer is Loose (1956). He also showed up in one serial, Republic's Spy Smasher (1942), and was a regular in Hollywood's B factories of the 1940s (he made thirteen pictures at PRC Studios alone, three of them "Michael Shayne" mysteries). Television took advantage of Bryar's talents in a number of guest spots, including the unsold pilot The Family Kovack (1974). He had somewhat better job security as a regular on the 1965 dramatic series The Long Hot Summer, playing Sheriff Harve Anders, though he and everyone else in the cast (from Edmond O'Brien to Wayne Rogers) were back haunting the casting offices when the series was cancelled after 26 episodes. One of Paul Bryar's last screen appearances was as one of the card players (with future star Sam Elliott) in the opening scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

Trivia: Supporting actor Albert Carrier was born in Italy. He made his film debut in Mexico where he appeared in five films. He went on to work in numerous Hollywood films during the '50s and '60s where he usually portrayed Frenchmen. He later went on to make over sixty guest appearances on television.

Trivia: Polish-born actor John Bleifer was often seen as skulking, sinister European types in the prewar films of 20th Century Fox. Bleifer had no trouble impersonating an Ivan in Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937), a Ludwig in Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1938), and a Pedro in The Mark of Zorro (1940), utilizing essentially the same accent in all three roles. During the war, Bleifer alternated between fascist villains and hapless refugees. Active until the early '80s, John Bleifer essayed such fleeting roles as Ben-Dan in QB VII (1974) and a rabbi in The Frisco Kid (1979).