Trivia: In his youth, George Reeves aspired to become a boxer, but gave up this pursuit because his mother was worried that he'd be seriously injured. Attracted to acting, Reeves attended the Pasadena Playhouse, where he starred in several productions. In 1939, Reeves was selected to play one of the Tarleton twins in the Selznick superproduction Gone With the Wind (1939). He made an excellent impression in the role, and spent the next few years playing roles of varying sizes at Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, and Paramount. He was praised by fans and reviewers alike for his performances in Lydia (1941) and So Proudly We Hail (1943); upon returning from WWII service, however, Reeves found it more difficult to get good roles. He starred in a few "B"'s and in the title role of the Columbia serial The Adventures of Sir Galahad (1949), but for the most part was shunted away in ordinary villain roles. In 1951, he starred in the Lippert programmer Superman vs. the Mole Men, playing both the Man of Steel and his bespectacled alter ego, Clark Kent. This led to the immensely popular Superman TV series, in which Reeves starred from 1953 through 1957. While Superman saved Reeves' career, it also permanently typecast him. He made an appearance as wagon train leader James Stephen in Disney's Westward Ho, the Wagons! (1956), though the producer felt it expeditious to hide Reeves behind a heavy beard. While it is now commonly believed that Reeves was unable to get work after the cancellation of Superman in 1957, he was in fact poised to embark on several lucrative projects, including directing assignments on two medium-budget adventure pictures and a worldwide personal appearance tour. On June 16, 1959, Reeves died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. The official ruling was suicide -- and, since he left no note, it was assumed that Reeves was despondent over his flagging career. Since that time, however, there has been a mounting suspicion (engendered by the actor's friends and family) that George Reeves was murdered.

Trivia: American actor Milton Frome made an unlikely film debut as the cowboy star of Grand National's Ride 'Em Cowgirl (1939)--unlikely in that the tall, bald actor spent the rest of his career playing nervous corporate types and "second bananas" for some of show business' greatest clowns. After touring with the USO during World War II, the vaudeville-trained Frome was an early arrival on the television scene: he worked as a straight man and foil on Milton Berle's variety series, and also functioned as the hapless target of the antics of Martin and Lewis on The Colgate Comedy Hour. The actor was also busy in live and filmed detective and action series (he frequently appeared in Superman with his good friend George Reeves) as well as in two-reel comedies with The Three Stooges. After Jerry Lewis broke away from Dean Martin, Frome continued to function as one of Lewis' stock company in such films as The Delicate Delinquent (1957), The Nutty Professor (1963) and Disorderly Orderly (1964). TV sitcom buffs remember Milton Frome best as Lawrence Chapman, the hapless mogul who ran a film studio owned by rustic millionaire Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies.

Trivia: Born in L.A. and raised in Pasadena, Jack Larson's ingenuous, "golly gee" screen image served him well when in 1951 he was cast as cub reporter Jimmy Olsen on the TV series Superman. He remained with the program until 1957, by which time he had become so thoroughly identified with the role that he had considerable difficulty landing other film assignments. Eventually Larson gave up acting to concentrate on writing plays and musical librettos; one of his more prestigious assignments was a collaboration with noted composer Virgil Thompson. The longtime companion of filmmaker James Bridges, Jack Larson served as the co-producer of such Bridges films as The Paper Chase (1973), Urban Cowboy (1980), and Bright Lights, Big City (1988). He made a guest appearance in a 1996 episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, playing an older version of Jimmy Olsen. Larson died in 2015, at age 87.

Trivia: Born and educated in Pennsylvania, John Hamilton headed to New York in his twenties to launch a 25-year stage career. Ideally cast as businessmen and officials, the silver-haired Hamilton worked opposite such luminaries as George M. Cohan and Ann Harding. He toured in the original company of the long-running Frank Bacon vehicle Lightnin', and also figured prominently in the original New York productions of Seventh Heaven and Broadway. He made his film bow in 1930, costarring with Donald Meek in a series of 2-reel S.S.Van Dyne whodunits (The Skull Mystery, The Wall St. Mystery) filmed at Vitaphone's Brooklyn studios. Vitaphone's parent company, Warner Bros., brought Hamilton to Hollywood in 1936, where he spent the next twenty years playing bits and supporting roles as police chiefs, judges, senators, generals and other authority figures. Humphrey Bogart fans will remember Hamilton as the clipped-speech DA in The Maltese Falcon (1941), while Jimmy Cagney devotees will recall Hamilton as the recruiting officer who inspires George M. Cohan (Cagney) to compose "Over There" in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Continuing to accept small roles in films until the mid '50s (he was the justice of the peace who marries Marlon Brando to Teresa Wright in 1950's The Men), Hamilton also supplemented his income with a group of advertisements for an eyeglasses firm. John Hamilton is best known to TV-addicted baby boomers for his six-year stint as blustering editor Perry "Great Caesar's Ghost!" White on the Adventures of Superman series.

Trivia: From a family of minstrel performers, tough-looking John Cliff (born Clifford) toured with carnivals prior to landing in Hollywood shortly after World War II. In scores of films from 1946, the dark-haired Cliff was almost always cast as a heavy, notably in Westerns, and would later become equally busy on television. He retired from performing in 1968 and went into real estate.

Trivia: The son of a wholesale grocer who later became one of the founders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Robert Shayne studied business administration at Boston University. Intending to study for the ministry, Shayne opted instead to work as field secretary for the Unitarian Layman's League. He went on to sell real estate during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s before heading northward to launch an acting career. After Broadway experience, Shayne was signed to a film contract at RKO radio in 1934. When this led nowhere, Shayne returned to the stage. While appearing with Katharine Hepburn in the Philip Barry play Without Love, Shayne was again beckoned to Hollywood, this time by Warner Bros. Most of his feature film roles under the Warner banner were of the sort that any competent actor could have played; he was better served by the studio's short subjects department, which starred him in a series of 2-reel "pocket westerns" built around stock footage from earlier outdoor epics. He began free-lancing in 1946, playing roles of varying size and importance at every major and minor outfit in Hollywood. In 1951, Shayne was cast in his best-known role: Inspector Henderson on the long-running TV adventure series Superman. He quit acting in the mid-1970s to become an investment banker with the Boston Stock Exchange. The resurgence of the old Superman series on television during this decade thrust Shayne back into the limelight, encouraging him to go back before the cameras. He was last seen in a recurring role on the 1990 Superman-like weekly series The Flash. Reflecting on his busy but only fitfully successful acting career, Robert Shayne commented in 1975 that "It was work, hard and long; a terrible business when things go wrong, a rewarding career when things go right."

Trivia: If Dolores Fuller had ever thought in the 1970s, 1980s, or early '90s about what she would be known for professionally in the 21st century, it might well have been for writing songs for Elvis Presley and Peggy Lee or perhaps managing Tanya Tucker early in the singer's career. Instead, she is best known (downright famous, in fact) for her 40-years-past career as an actress, her mid-'50s relationship with director Edward D. Wood Jr., and the three movies that she made with him. The films were scarcely seen and virtually unreviewed at the time of their release and for decades after. Considering that one of those movies -- Glen or Glenda -- was the first American feature film dealing with the subject of transvestism and drew much of its content from one corner of Fuller's relationship with the cross-dressing Wood, her recognition for them seems all the more improbable, especially for a woman who started life in South Bend, IN, during the era of silent movies. Fuller was born there in 1923 (some sources say 1925), but her family moved to California when she was very young. Setting her sights on an acting career, she worked in school plays and later became a model, also succeeding in getting some television work in the early days of the medium. An attractive young woman (Fuller was a stand-in for Jayne Mansfield in the theatrical production of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter in the mid-'50s), she was a natural for set decoration on programs like Chevrolet Playhouse, Queen for a Day, and The Red Skelton Show. Not content to rely on her looks, however, she also studied acting in New York with Stella Adler. Fuller became a working actress, playing tiny roles in relatively high profile feature films, such as Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia, and getting larger roles in small movies, such as the notoriously low-budget Mesa of Lost Women. According to Greg Douglass' fall 2000 article in Filmfax, Fuller met Edward D. Wood Jr., the legendary anti-genius director, when the latter placed an ad announcing auditions for a film planned under the title of The Hidden Face (completed as Jail Bait), which was to be produced by Howco, the same outfit that bankrolled Mesa of Lost Women. Wood and Fuller became entangled romantically very early on and they apparently were a good match for each other, despite the fact that she didn't understand his fetish for dressing up as a woman or his special fixation on her white Angora sweaters; they both loved movies and were fascinated by the idea of writing them and making them, and simply loved to talk film. Still, it was difficult for her when Wood put them both, along with his transvestism, into his semi-autobiographical film Glen or Glenda; the personal nature of the movie and the fact that it so closely paralleled their private life (which she wanted kept private) mortally offended the actress. Despite her unhappiness with that film, Fuller stayed with Wood for another two years and was also responsible for bringing future Plan 9 From Outer Space leading lady Mona McKinnon into the director's orbit; early in her relationship with Wood, Fuller had shared an apartment with McKinnon, which resulted in the actress playing a small role in Jail Bait. Fuller was to have been the female lead in Wood's Bride of the Monster, but in order to secure his financing, the director was forced to replace her with actress Loretta King, while Fuller was given a much smaller role. That decision -- coupled with Wood's increasingly erratic personal behavior -- led to the breakup of their romantic relationship. In contrast to most of the other people who moved in Wood's close orbit, however, Fuller had real talent and a real career ahead of her, even when she lived with Wood, she was represented by Paul Kohner, one of the top talent agents in Hollywood, and she was getting steady work on television as well as roles in films from major studios. Thus, she never fell, as others did, upon leaving Wood's orbit and, indeed, only ascended. By the end of the 1950s, she'd started her own record company, Dee Records, and one of the talents that she discovered was a New York-born singer/guitarist named John Ramistella, who later became Johnny Rivers. Later on, her ability as a songwriter manifested itself through the intervention of her friend, producer Hal Wallis; Fuller had wanted to get an acting role in the Elvis Presley movie Blue Hawaii, which Wallis was producing, but instead he put her in touch with Hill & Range, the publisher that provided Presley with songs. Fuller went into a collaborative partnership with composer Ben Weissman and got one song, "Rock-A-Hula Baby," into Blue Hawaii. It was a beginning that eventually led to Presley recording a dozen of her songs. Fuller also had her music recorded by Nat "King" Cole, Peggy Lee, and other leading talents of the period. By the end of the 1960s, in addition to writing songs, Fuller had also moved into talent management and can take credit for discovering 13-year-old Tanya Tucker. Fuller's focus on acting receded rapidly as her music career took off, and for 30 years was best known in the entertainment business as a creative, behind-the-scenes personality. The 1994 release of Tim Burton's film Ed Wood, however, brought new attention to her onscreen career (or, at least, the part of it with Wood) -- although she is on record as not appreciating the portrayal that she received in the film from Sarah Jessica Parker. In 2000, she was the subject of a documentary on German television that focused as much on her music career as her work with Wood and was reported to be working on a Broadway musical based on her life with the director.

Trivia: Diminutive, baby-faced actress Noel Neill entered films as a Paramount starlet in 1942. Though she was showcased in one of the musical numbers in The Fleet's In (1944) and was starred in the Oscar-nominated Technicolor short College Queen (1945), most of her Paramount assignments were thankless bit parts. She fared better as one of the leads in Monogram's Teen Agers series of the mid- to late '40s. In 1948 she was cast as intrepid girl reporter Lois Lane in the Columbia serial The Adventures of Superman, repeating the role in the 1950 chapter play Atom Man vs. Superman. At the time, she regarded it as just another freelance job, perhaps a little better than her cameos in such features as An American in Paris (in 1951 as the American art student) and DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1953). But someone was impressed by Neill's appealingly vulnerable interpretation of Lois Lane, and in 1953 she was hired to replace Phyllis Coates as Lois in the TV version of Superman. She remained with the series for 78 episodes, gaining an enormous fan following (consisting primarily of ten-year-old boys) if not a commensurately enormous bank account. Retiring to private life after the cancellation of Superman in 1958, she was brought back into the limelight during the nostalgia craze of the 1970s. She made countless lecture appearances on the college and film convention circuit, and in 1978 returned to films as Lois Lane's mother in the big-budget Superman: The Movie: alas, most of her part ended up on the cutting-room floor, and neither she nor fellow Adventures of Superman alumnus Kirk Alyn received billing. Noel Neill's last TV appearance to date was a guest spot in a 1991 episode of the syndicated The Adventures of Superboy; she made a cameo appearance in 2006's Superman Returns. Neill died in 2016, at age 95.

Trivia: American actor/playwright Nolan Leary made his stage debut in 1911; 60 years later, he was still appearing in small film and TV roles. From 1943 onward, Leary showed up in some 150 movies, mostly in bit roles. One of his juicier screen assignments was as the deaf-mute father of Lon Chaney James Cagney in Man of 1000 Faces (1958). In 1974, Nolan Leary showed up briefly as Ted Baxter's prodigal father on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.