Trivia: In the first ten years of his life, Raymond Burr moved from town to town with his mother, a single parent who supported her little family by playing the organ in movie houses and churches. An unusually large child, he was able to land odd jobs that would normally go to adults. He worked as a ranch hand, a traveling tinted-photograph salesman, a Forest service fire guard, and a property agent in China, where his mother had briefly resettled. At 19, he made the acquaintance of film director Anatole Litvak, who arranged for Burr to get a job at a Toronto summer-stock theater. This led to a stint with a touring English rep company; one of his co-workers, Annette Sutherland, became his first wife. After a brief stint as a nightclub singer in Paris, Burr studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and took adult education courses at Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Chunking. His first New York theatrical break was in the 1943 play Duke in Darkness. That same year, his wife Sutherland was killed in the same plane crash that took the life of actor Leslie Howard. Distraught after the death of his wife, Burr joined the Navy, served two years, then returned to America in the company of his four-year-old son, Michael Evan Burr (Michael would die of leukemia in 1953). Told by Hollywood agents that he was overweight for movies, the 340-pound Burr spent a torturous six months living on 750 calories per day. Emerging at a trim 210 pounds, he landed his first film role, an unbilled bit as Claudette Colbert's dancing partner in Without Reservations (1946). It was in San Quentin (1946), his next film, that Burr found his true metier, as a brooding villain. He spent the next ten years specializing in heavies, menacing everyone from the Marx Brothers (1949's Love Happy) to Clark Gable (1950's Key to the City) to Montgomery Clift (1951's A Place in the Sun) to Natalie Wood (1954's A Cry in the Night). His most celebrated assignments during this period included the role of melancholy wife murderer Lars Thorwald in Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and reporter Steve Martin in the English-language scenes of the Japanese monster rally Godzilla (1956), a characterization he'd repeat three decades later in Godzilla 1985. While he worked steadily on radio and television, Burr seemed a poor prospect for series stardom, especially after being rejected for the role of Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke on the grounds that his voice was too big. In 1957, he was tested for the role of district attorney Hamilton Burger in the upcoming TV series Perry Mason. Tired of playing unpleasant secondary roles, Burr agreed to read for Burger only if he was also given a shot at the leading character. Producer Gail Patrick Jackson, who'd been courting such big names as William Holden, Fred MacMurray, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr., agreed to humor Burr by permitting him to test for both Burger and Perry Mason. Upon viewing Burr's test for the latter role, Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner jumped up, pointed at the screen, and cried "That's him!" Burr was cast as Mason on the spot, remaining with the role until the series' cancellation in 1966 and winning three Emmies along the way. Though famous for his intense powers of concentration during working hours -- he didn't simply play Perry Mason, he immersed himself in the role -- Burr nonetheless found time to indulge in endless on-set practical jokes, many of these directed at his co-star and beloved friend, actress Barbara Hale. Less than a year after Mason's demise, Burr was back at work as the wheelchair-bound protagonist of the weekly detective series Ironside, which ran from 1967 to 1975. His later projects included the short-lived TVer Kingston Confidential (1976), a sparkling cameo in Airplane 2: The Sequel (1982), and 26 two-hour Perry Mason specials, lensed between 1986 and 1993. Burr was one of the most liked and highly respected men in Hollywood. Fiercely devoted to his friends and co-workers, Burr would threaten to walk off the set whenever one of his associates was treated in a less than chivalrous manner by the producers or the network. Burr also devoted innumerable hours to charitable and humanitarian works, including his personally financed one-man tours of Korean and Vietnamese army bases, his support of two dozen foster children, and his generous financial contributions to the population of the 4,000-acre Fiji island of Naitauba, which he partly owned. Despite his unbounded generosity and genuine love of people, Burr was an intensely private person. After his divorce from his second wife and the death from cancer of his third, Burr remained a bachelor from 1955 until his death. Stricken by kidney cancer late in 1992, he insisted upon maintaining his usual hectic pace, filming one last Mason TV movie and taking an extended trip to Europe. In his last weeks, Burr refused to see anyone but his closest friends, throwing "farewell" parties to keep their spirits up. Forty-eight hours after telling his longtime friend and business partner Robert Benevides, "If I lie down, I'll die," 76-year-old Raymond Burr did just that -- dying as he'd lived, on his own terms.

Trivia: The son of legendary Broadway actor DeWolfe Hopper and movie actress Hedda Hopper, William Hopper made his film debut as an infant in one of his father's films. The popular consensus is that the younger Hopper was given his first talking-picture break because of his mother's reputation as the most feared of the Hollywood gossips. Not so: Hopper was signed to his first Warner Bros. contract in 1937, a year or so before Hedda had established herself as the queen of the dirt-dishers. At first billing himself as DeWolfe Hopper Jr., Hopper languished in bit parts and walk-ons for several years. He wasn't able to graduate to better roles until the 1950s, by which time he was calling himself William Hopper. After a largely undistinguished film career (notable exceptions to his usual humdrum assignments were his roles in 20 Million Miles to Earth [1957] and The Bad Seed [1956]) Hopper finally gained fame -- and on his own merits -- as private detective Paul Drake on the enormously popular Perry Mason television series, which began its eight-season run in 1957. In a bizarre coincidence, Perry Mason left the air in 1966, the same year that William Hopper's mother Hedda passed away.

Trivia: The scion of a wealthy Detroit family, William Talman would later claim that he learned to "champion the underdog" while a member of his Episcopal church boxing team. In his 20s, Talman became an evangelist for the Moral Re-Armament Movement, and later made at stab at studying law. He drifted to New York, where, through the intervention of an actor friend of his father, he began picking up small stage roles. After extensive experience in New York and in the touring company of Of Mice and Men, Talman moved to Hollywood, where in 1949 he played his first important screen role as a gangster in Red, Hot and Blue (1949). At his best when his characters were at their worst, Talman developed into one of Tinseltown's most fearsome screen villains, never more so than when he played a psycho killer who slept with one eye open in the noir classic The Hitchhiker (1955). In 1957, Talman was cast as Hamilton Burger, the perennially losing District Attorney on the popular TV weekly Perry Mason. He remained with the series until March of 1960, when he was arrested for throwing a wild party where vast quantities of illegal substances were consumed. The Perry Mason producers had every intention of firing Talman from the series, but he was reinstated thanks to the loyal intervention of his co-stars -- particularly Raymond Burr, who threatened to quit the show if Talman wasn't given a second chance. William Talman was last seen on TV in a series of anti-smoking public service announcements; these spots were run posthumously, at Talman's request, following his death from lung cancer at the age of 53.

Trivia: Of Swedish-American heritage, Virginia Christine (born Virginia Kraft) grew up in largely Scandinavian communities in Iowa and Minnesota. As a high schooler, Christine won a National Forensic League award, which led to her first professional engagement on a Chicago radio station. When her family moved to Los Angeles, Christine sought out radio work while attending college. She was trained for a theatrical career by actor/director Fritz Feld, who later became her husband. In 1942, she signed a contract with Warner Bros., appearing in bits in such films as Edge of Darkness (1943) and Mission to Moscow (1944). As a free-lance actress, Christine played the female lead in The Mummy's Curse (1945), a picture she later described as "ghastly." Maturing into a much-in-demand character actress, Christine appeared in four Stanley Kramer productions: The Men (1950), Not as a Stranger (1955), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). Other movie assignments ranged from the heights of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) to the depths of Billy the Kid Meets Dracula (1978). To a generation of Americans who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, Christine will forever be Mrs. Olson, the helpful Swedish neighbor in scores of Folger's Coffee commercials.

Trivia: Until his death at 74 from a heart attack, Liam Sullivan was a very busy actor on television and in theater, and in the former medium, he made a career specializing almost exclusively in erudite villains (or, at least, luckless ambitious men). A native of Jacksonville, IL, Sullivan was descended from W.E. Sullivan, the founder of the renowned Eli Bridge Company; the latter conpany became famous for popularizing the Ferris wheel, and a century later remains a mainstay of the amusement ride industry. Liam Sullivan, however, decided to go into a different end of the entertainment field, acting in local theater while attending Illinois College and later studying drama at Harvard University. His patrician good looks and dashing persona, coupled with a good range, enabled him to take a large variety of parts: playboys, rogues, heroes. In his younger days, he'd have made a perfect Rupert of Hentzau in The Prisoner of Zenda. Sullivan's Broadway credits included The Constant Wife with Katherine Cornell, and Love's Labours Lost, both in the early 1950s; and, in the 1960s, Mike Nichols' production of The Little Foxes. Though he also did theatrical work in Los Angeles, Sullivan didn't make too many movie appearances: Disney's That Darn Cat (as Agent Sullivan, no less) and Bert I. Gordon's The Magic Sword were probably his two most widely seen films.His television career, however, which began at the start of the 1950s on live shows such as Lights Out, afforded Sullivan a busy career across four decades. He was on the soap opera General Hospital, but was also a familiar figure in prime-time series, including westerns such as Have Gun Will Travel, The Virginian, Bonanza, and The Monroes (a series in which he had a regular role as a villain); but also in science fiction (Lost In Space), crime dramas (The Fugitive, Dragnet), and comedies (Gomer Pyle, USMC). On Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, in the episode "Leviathan," he plays an ambitious scientist whose undersea discovery results in his undergoing a hideous transformation and a horrible fate; in the Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren," he made a memorable impression as a humanoid alien (working opposite Barbara Babcock in a sadistic role), glib-tongued, erudite, and perfectly at ease manipulating and attempting to kill people with his telekinetic power. He also starred in one of the more widely remembered Twilight Zone shows, "The Silence," playing a man who accepts a bet from a social rival that he can go for a year without uttering a single word. Sullivan's best performance, however, was in the 1968 Dragnet episode "The Big Prophet," as William Bentley, an academic-turned-guru (obviously inspired by Timothy Leary) whose public espousal of drug use results in a confrontation with the police. Sullivan was at his most waspish (in a manner reminiscent of Clifton Webb's Waldo Lydecker from Laura) in the three-man drama, made up entirely of his verbal sparring with series stars Jack Webb and Harry Morgan. He was still working regularly in the 1990s, right up to the time of his death, a month before his 75th birthday.

Trivia: American actor Vaughn Taylor was trained as a certified public accountant at Northeastern University. While performing in college theatricals, Taylor entertained notions of a stage career; he won a scholarship at the Leland Powers School of Theatre, but his resources were so low that he had to sell his blood to blood banks to pay his expenses. Steady stock, tent-show, and radio work convinced Taylor that he'd made the right career move, and upon completing his Army duties in 1945, the actor took on the new challenge of live television. Taylor played so many TV roles that it is fruitless to try to list them, though the first "couch potato generation" might have affectionate memories of the actor as sharp-witted janitor Ernest P. Duckweather on the 1953 satirical puppet show Johnny Jupiter. (Taylor was replaced by Wright King when the series went from live to film). Taylor was also a prominent "summer repertory" actor on the prestigious anthology Robert Montgomery Presents from 1952 through 1954. The movies utilized Taylor's talents, often in roles as duplicitous executives or crooked business partners: he was the two-timing showman beheaded by magician Vincent Price in The Mad Magician (1954). Anyone who follows the reruns of The Twilight Zone will be more than familiar with the skill and range of Vaughn Taylor: he played bookworm Burgess Meredith's hardhearted boss in "Time Enough at Last," a crazed old conjurer in "Still Valley," an unctuous robot salesman in "I Sing the Body Electric" and a kindly wheelchair-bound gent who sells his kindness and becomes a killer in "The Self-Improvement of Salvatore Ross."

Trivia: Cathy O'Donnell was signed to a movie contract by Sam Goldwyn after a brief flurry of stage activity. Cathy's first film assignment would remain her best: in Goldwyn's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), she sensitively essayed the very difficult role of Wilma Cameron, high school sweetheart of double amputee Harold Russell. She spent most of her Goldwyn contract on loan to other studios: one of her better films was RKO'sThey Live By Night (1947), a Bonnie and Clyde precursor starring fellow Goldwyn contractee Farley Granger. In her mid-30s, O'Donnell was still youthful-looking enough to portray Charlton Heston's leprosy-ridden younger sister in Ben-Hur (1959), the actress' next-to-last film. After eleven years' retirement, the 46-year-old Cathy O'Donnell died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Trivia: A Broadway actor since 1931, Philip Ober first appeared before the cameras in 1951, when he was invited by actor/director Mel Ferrer to play a supporting role in The Secret Fury (1951). Adept at portraying executive types who seemed to be up to something shady, Ober was often as not cast as a corporate villain. His most famous film role was in the 1953 Oscar-winner From Here to Eternity as the hateful Army officer who, while his wife, Deborah Kerr, carries on an affair with Burt Lancaster, tries to strongarm Montgomery Clift into entering a boxing competition. Ober voluntarily gave up his acting career in the mid-'60s when he joined the U.S. Consular Service in Mexico. Married three times, Philip Ober was the former husband of I Love Lucy co-star Vivian Vance.

Trivia: Broadway actor Richard Gaines made his initial film appearance as Patrick Henry in The Howards of Virginia (1940). Gaines is best-known to modern audiences as Jean Arthur's stuffy suitor C. J. Pendergast in George Stevens' The More the Merrier (1942). Less pompous but no less dignified were his performances as George Washington in DeMille's Unconquered (1947) and Professor Jackson in Flight to Mars (1953). Either by accident or design, Richard Gaines made most of his last screen appearances at MGM, playing DAs, doctors and other briskly professional types.

Trivia: Connie Cezon's main claim to fame is as a comic actress, and a romantic and slapstick foil for the Three Stooges; but it was her resemblance to Bette Davis that earned her a place (albeit uncredited) in the feature film Dead Ringer, and a mention in the actress' autobiography. Connie Cezon (whose name was often spelled "Cezan" in credits) is probably best remembered by fans of the Three Stooges for the five screen appearances she made with the trio, beginning with Corny Casanovas in 1952. Cezon proved in her onscreen run-ins with the Stooges that she could give as good as she could get, leading them to comedic ruin with her romantic wiles in the movie. In Tricky Dicks (1953), the trio's parody of Detective Story, she played a slick pickpocket, and in Hot Stuff (1956), Cezon dished out mayhem to an annoyingly flirtatious Moe Howard; and she was on the receiving end of the slapstick humor for Rusty Romeos (1957), a remake of Corny Casanovas. Born Consuelo Cezon, she trained in musical comedy and melodrama at the Pasadena Playhouse, appeared for four years in blackouts for Ken Murray, and worked in legitimate theater in Hollywood and New York. Her comedic skills brought her to the attention of playwright Moss Hart, who used her in a handful of his productions. She did variety television with Murray, and also did straight acting roles -- with some understated comedy -- in the recurring role of receptionist Gertie Lade on the classic late-'50s series Perry Mason, starring Raymond Burr. Cezon's feature-film performances have been few in number -- apart from a small role in the Jerry Lewis feature The Errand Boy (1962), her most notable big-screen appearances were as a waitress in Bruno Ve Sota's low-budget film noir The Female Jungle (1956), and serving as Bette Davis' seen-from-the-back double in Dead Ringer (1964). Her resemblance to the star was essential in making the movie -- in which Davis played identical twins -- and so impressed Davis that she later remarked that the director could have used Cezon in place of her in certain shots.

Trivia: Michael Fox played character parts--usually villains--in scores of television shows and in more than 100 films, mostly during the '50s and '60s. Fans of the CBS daily serial The Bold and the Beautiful will remember him for having played Saul Feinberg from 1987-1986. Born and raised in Yonkers, New York and first made his name on Broadway starring opposite Lillian Gish in The Story of Mary Stuart. Fox made his film debut in films such as Voodoo Tiger and Backhawks (both 1952). Later in his career, Fox founded the Theater East actors organization. Fox passed away at the Motion Picture Home, Woodland Hills, California. The 75-year-old was suffering from pneumonia at the time.

Trivia: Probably no one came by the label "Runyon-esque" more honestly than Polish-born actor George E. Stone; a close friend of writer Damon Runyon, Stone was seemingly put on this earth to play characters named Society Max and Toothpick Charlie, and to mouth such colloquialisms as "It is known far and wide" and "More than somewhat." Starting his career as a Broadway "hoofer," the diminutive Stone made his film bow as "the Sewer Rat" in the 1927 silent Seventh Heaven. His most prolific film years were 1929 to 1936, during which period he showed up in dozens of Warner Bros. "urban" films and backstage musicals, and also appeared as the doomed Earle Williams in the 1931 version of The Front Page. He was so closely associated with gangster parts by 1936 that Warners felt obligated to commission a magazine article showing Stone being transformed, via makeup, into an un-gangsterish Spaniard for Anthony Adverse (1936). For producer Hal Roach, Stone played three of his oddest film roles: a self-pitying serial killer in The Housekeeper's Daughter (1938), an amorous Indian brave in Road Show (1940), and Japanese envoy Suki Yaki in The Devil With Hitler (1942). Stone's most popular role of the 1940s was as "the Runt" in Columbia's Boston Blackie series. In the late '40s, Stone was forced to severely curtail his acting assignments due to failing eyesight. Though he was totally blind by the mid-'50s, Stone's show business friends, aware of the actor's precarious financial state, saw to it that he got TV and film work, even if it meant that his co-stars had to literally lead him by the hand around the set. No one was kinder to George E. Stone than the cast and crew of the Perry Mason TV series, in which Stone was given prominent billing as the Court Clerk, a part that required nothing more of him than sitting silently at a desk and occasionally holding a Bible before a witness.