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: A radio singer at age 5, American actress Ann Blyth studied for an operatic career, making her debut in this endeavor with the San Carlo Opera Company. In 1943, at age 15, Ann was playing Paul Lukas' daughter in the Broadway production Watch on the Rhine; two years later she was under contract to Universal studios as the latest in that company's "threats" against their recalcitrant resident soprano Deanna Durbin. Blyth wasn't given anything close to a chance to show her talents until she was cast as Joan Crawford's hateful daughter Veda in Mildred Pierce (1945). For this performance, which ran the gamut from thinly veiled insults addressed at Crawford to the murder of her mother's paramour (Zachary Scott), she was nominated for an Academy Award. After recovering from a back injury, Blyth worked ceaselessly in films, alternating between sappily sweet parts in such fluff as Free for All (1949) and Sally and St. Anne (1951) and tougher assignments like the white-hot truculence expended in her portrayal of Regina Hubbard in Another Part of the Forest (1948). Perhaps the most off-kilter of her starring roles was in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) wherein she played the female half of the title, spending much of the film in a state of (implied) toplessness. In 1954, she was finally permitted to display her beautifully trained voice in such musicals as The Student Prince (1954), Rose Marie (1955) and Kismet (1956). But when called upon to play a real-life songstress in The Helen Morgan Story (1957), she was dubbed by Gogi Grant! Helen Morgan Story was Blyth's final film role; she spent the rest of her career on stage, TV and in concert - and, in the late 1970s, she showed up as the surprisingly domesticated spokesperson for Hostess Cupcakes.

Trivia: Primarily a stage actress -- she starred in the London production of Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun -- blonde, long-limbed Dolores Gray enjoyed a brief flurry of film activity. Though she made a brace of cameo appearances in Lady for a Night (1941) and Mr. Skeffington (1944), she began her movie career proper as Gene Kelly's vis-à-vis in MGM's It's Always Fair Weather (1955). She went on to play the alluring Lalume in Kismet (1955), the gossipy Sylvia in The Opposite Sex (the 1956 musical remake of The Women), and the TV star, ex-flame of sportswriter Gregory Peck in Designing Women (1957). When MGM briefly decided to abandon big-budget musicals in 1957, Dolores Gray bade farewell to films, successfully returning to the Broadway and London stage.

Trivia: A boyishly handsome, sleepy-eyed baritone of the Perry Como/Dean Martin school, Vic Damone was a discovery of Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio program. Tapped for potential film stardom by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1951, Damone was featured in such splashy MGM musicals as Rich, Young and Pretty (1951), Athena (1953), Deep in My Heart (1954) and, best of all, Kismet (1955). While he remained a popular recording artist (his rendition of "An Affair to Remember" was one of the major top-ten hits of the late 1950s), Damone never came across as a saleable screen personality. On television, Damone was a perennial summer-replacement host, starring in no fewer than five TV variety series between 1956 and 1971. In the latter year, he managed to stage a comeback as a Las Vegas headliner. Vic Damone was married to actress Pier Angeli and later to singer Diahann Carroll.

Trivia: Sebastian Cabot was one of the most recognizable acting talents ever to come out of England, a familiar and popular supporting player in movies and a star of American television for much of the last two decades of his life. For an actor who specialized in elegant and upper-class, educated roles, he was, ironically, a Cockney, born Charles Sebastian Thomas Cabot in London in July 1918, within the sound of the bells of St. Mary Le Bow Church. What's more, he came to an acting career fairly late -- and by sheer chance. When his father's business failed, Cabot left school at the age of 14 and began working as a garage helper, the first of many menial jobs. (Well into his fifties, his first love was cars and tinkering with them and their engines.) Cabot never had another day of formal education, and later worked as a chef -- which help precipitate his growth to 260 pounds -- and spent three years as a professional wrestler in London before World War II, an activity ended by an injury. It was while working as a driver for actor Frank Pettingell that Cabot first thought of acting as a career. Later, he bluffed his way into acting jobs by claiming that he'd performed in various roles that he'd heard discussed by his former boss and others while driving them around. He'd also picked up enough of the jargon of experienced actors and enough knowledge to bluff his way through small roles that he didn't keep for long. Along the way, however, he picked up more of what he needed, and bigger parts and longer professional relationships followed. Cabot got some extra work in films, started doing a lot of radio, and entertained the troops during World War II. When the war ended, he made his London debut in 1945, at age 27, in A Bell for Adano, and worked for the BBC as an expert in dialects. He was in John Gielgud's company when it brought Restoration comedy to the New York stage in 1947, and made his television debut on the same tour, playing a French schoolmaster in Topaz for CBS's Studio One, his first contact with the network that would make him a star more than a decade later. He first grew his familiar beard for a role in an Italian movie that was never produced, but the dignified, intense appearance that it gave him got Cabot the part of Lord Capulet in a mid-'50s film Romeo and Juliet and helped him secure the role of Porthos in the European-produced TV series The Three Musketeers, though to American filmgoers he was probably most familiar during those years for his appearances in such large-scale MGM productions as Richard Thorpe's Ivanhoe and Vincente Minnelli's Kismet, portraying the Grand Vizier in the latter. It was on American television in the '60s that Cabot established the persona that would make him a star -- but also leave him typecast. In 1960, he became the star, alongside Anthony George and Doug McClure, of a very cerebral suspense program called Checkmate (created by renowned mystery author Eric Ambler), which was about a firm of private investigators who specialize in preventing crime. As Dr. Carl Hyatt, Cabot was the program's rotund, dignified, Oxford-educated criminologist; the series ran two seasons. Around this same time, the actor also had major starring and supporting roles in such movies as The Time Machine (1960) and Twice Told Tales (1962). By then, he'd given up the stage in favor of film and TV work, enjoying a wide diversity of roles. One of his more difficult parts during this period was his guest appearance on The Twilight Zone in the 1960 installment "A Nice Place to Visit." He played Mr. Pip, a kind of tour guide from beyond the mortal veil who proves to have some unexpected angles to his character. Dressed in white and sporting his hair (including his distinguished beard) dyed white, Cabot carried the whole episode in tandem with Larry Blyden as the object of his attentions, a lately deceased criminal. Unfortunately, the dye-job sidelined the actor from other work for months until his natural color returned, though he was able to further cement his familiarity by becoming a regular on the celebrity game show Stump the Stars. In 1965, Cabot was approached with the script for the pilot of a proposed series called Family Affair. He didn't want to do it, and didn't care for the writing or his part -- a stereotypical, staid, dignified English butler -- but the money being offered for the pilot was better than decent, so he reluctantly agreed. The series sold, and for the next five seasons he endeared himself to a generation of viewers as the reserved, well-spoken Giles French (usually referred to as Mr. French), coping with the intrusion of three orphaned children on his employer's bachelor paradise. Although he did his best to bring a certain droll humor to the role, and the series did make him a star, Cabot became bored with the role and the show very early. In an interview done soon after it ended, he confided that both he and Brian Keith (the series' adult lead) were bored to the point of exhaustion for the last two seasons, though a new contract that he signed in the middle of the run also raised Cabot's pay to such a level that he was able to pick and choose his roles once the show had ended. He did talk shows and even a game show or two, but as an actor, in order to avoid being further typecast, he deliberately chose parts that were as different as possible from that of Mr. French. The best of those were his portrayal of the brutal spy master in a pair of made-for-TV movies directed by Roy Ward Baker and produced and written by Jimmy Sangster: The Spy Killer (1969) and Foreign Exchange (1970). He later became the host of the occult-thriller series Ghost Story, and from the late '60s through the mid-'70s, also did a large amount of voice-over work for Disney and other producers of animated features, including The Jungle Book in 1967 and several Winnie the Pooh films. Cabot died in August 1977 after suffering a stroke at his home in British Columbia.

Trivia: Monty Woolley was born to privilege in New York's Bristol Hotel, an establishment owned by his wealthy father. Growing up in the highest of Manhattan's society circles, the young Woolley was well acquainted with many of the famed personages of the era. At Yale, Woolley's classmate and best friend was the equally well-connected Cole Porter; the two chums formed a thriving theatrical/social clique, which resulted in several wittily assembled student musical reviews. Woolley became president of the Yale Dramatic Association, then transferred to Harvard, returning to Yale after graduation as an English instructor. A member of the National Guard, Woolley served as an intelligence officer in France during World War I. After the war, he commandeered the Yale Experimental Theater, a position he held until 1927. Cole Porter helped Woolley break into professional theater by securing him work as a stage director in the 1930s. Sporting a full professorial beard which emphasized his inbred snobbish intellectualism, Woolley was an ideal "type" for films. After a few years of minor movie roles as doctors and judges, Woolley attained full stardom as the spectacularly insufferable Sheridan Whiteside (a character based on critic/raconteur Alexander Woollcott) in the 1939 Broadway production The Man Who Came to Dinner. He re-created the role for the 1941 screen version of Dinner, then spent the rest of his career playing bombastic variations on Whiteside. When Woolley felt like it, he could be an actor of great range and depth; he was Oscar-nominated for his performances in The Pied Piper (1942) and Since You Went Away (1946). In the 1946 Cole Porter biopic Night and Day, Woolley played himself, and who cared that he was a bit long in the tooth for a Yale undergrad? Though he professed to despise radio, Woolley spent the 1950-1951 season starring in the radio sitcom The Magnificent Montague, portraying a once-famous Shakespearean actor reduced to hosting a simpering kiddie show. Almost exactly the same person offscreen as on, Woolley delighted in insulting and patronizing everyone who crossed his path -- just as much as they probably enjoyed being insulted and patronized. Forced to retire from acting due to ill health, Monty Woolley made his last screen appearance in Kismet (1955), playing an uncharacteristically amiable Omar Khayyam.

Trivia: Discovered by famed African-American comedian Bert Williams, actor Jay C. Flippen attained his first Broadway stage role in 1920's Broadway Brevities. Entertainers of the period were expected to sing, dance, act and clown with equal expertise, and the young Flippen was no slouch in any of these categories. He not only shared billing with such stage luminaries as Jack Benny and Texas Guinan, but he boned up on his ad-lib skills as a radio announcer for the New York Yankees games. At one time president of the American Guild of Variety Artists, Flippen did as many benefits for worthy causes as he did paid performances and worked tirelessly in all showbiz branches: movies, stage (including the touring version of Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin), radio (he was one of the first game show emcees) and even early experimental television broadcasts. After several years of alternating between raspy-voiced villains and lovable "Pop"- type characters in films, Flippen increased his fan following with a supporting role as C.P.O. Nelson on the 1962 sitcom Ensign O'Toole, which, though it lasted only one network season, was a particular favorite in syndicated reruns. In 1964, Flippen suffered a setback when a gangrenous leg had to be amputated. Choosing not to be what he described as "a turnip," Jay C. Flippen continued his acting career from a wheelchair, performing with vim and vinegar in films and on television until his death.

Trivia: A graduate of Santa Monica Junior College, Jack Elam spent the immediate post-World War II years as an accountant, numbering several important Hollywood stars among his clients. Already blind in one eye from a childhood fight, Elam was in danger of losing the sight in his other eye as a result of his demanding profession. Several of his show business friends suggested that Elam give acting a try; Elam would be a natural as a villain. A natural he was, and throughout the 1950s Elam cemented his reputation as one of the meanest-looking and most reliable "heavies" in the movies. Few of his screen roles gave him the opportunity to display his natural wit and sense of comic timing, but inklings of these skills were evident in his first regular TV series assignments: The Dakotas and Temple Houston, both 1963. In 1967, Elam was given his first all-out comedy role in Support Your Local Sheriff, after which he found his villainous assignments dwindling and his comic jobs increasing. Elam starred as the patriarch of an itinerant Southwestern family in the 1974 TV series The Texas Wheelers (his sons were played by Gary Busey and Mark Hamill), and in 1979 he played a benign Frankenstein-monster type in the weekly horror spoof Struck By Lightning. Later TV series in the Elam manifest included Detective in the House (1985) and Easy Street (1987). Of course Elam would also crack up audiences in the 1980s with his roles in Cannonball Run and Cannonball Run II. Though well established as a comic actor, Elam would never completely abandon the western genre that had sustained him in the 1950s and 1960s; in 1993, a proud Elam was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame. Two short years later the longitme star would essay his final screen role in the made for television western Bonanza: Under Attack.

Trivia: Though typecast as a dull-witted brute, Austrian-born Mike Mazurki was the holder of a Bachelor of Arts degree from Manhattan College. During the 1930s, he was a professional football and basketball player, as well as a heavyweight wrestler. His clock-stopping facial features enabled Mazurki to pick up bit and supporting roles in such films as The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and Dr.Renault's Secret (1943). Larger parts came his way after his indelible portrayal of psychotic brute Moose Malloy in 1944's Murder My Sweet. His trademarked slurred speech was reportedly the result of an injury to his Adam's apple, incurred during his wrestling days. While villainy was his bread and butter, Mazurki enjoyed working with comedians like Jerry Lewis and Lou Costello; he was particularly fond of the latter because the diminutive Costello treated him with dignity and respect, defending big Mike against people who treated the hulking actor like a big dumb lug. Mazurki's many TV appearances included a regular role on the short-lived 1971 sitcom The Chicago Teddy Bears. In 1976, Mike Mazurki was effectively cast as a kindly trapper in the family-oriented "four-waller" Challenge to Be Free, which ended up a cash cow for the veteran actor.

Trivia: Before his motion picture career DeCorsia was a radio actor ("March of Time," "That Hammer Guy," "The Shadow"). He made his film debut in 1948 with The Lady from Shanghai. DeCorsia generally played lead villain roles (Enforcer, Naked City, Slightly Scarlet) or he occasionally parodied those villainous types (Kettles in the Ozarks, Dance With Me Henry).