Trivia: Bald, hook-nosed character actor John Harmon launched his film career in 1939. Harmon's screen assignments ranged from shifty-eyed gangsters, rural law enforcement officials and hen-pecked husbands. He was seen in films as diverse as Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and the "B" horror flick Monster of Piedra Blancas. Star Trek fans will remember John Harmon for his supporting role in the 1967 episode "City on the Edge of Forever."

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from 1957.

Trivia: The scion of a prosperous California ranching family, actor Cliff Robertson took up drama in high school simply because it was the only "legal" way to cut classes. After wartime service, Robertson entered Ohio's Antioch College, beginning his professional career as a radio announcer. His first extensive stage work consisted of two years with the touring company of Mister Roberts. He made it to Broadway in 1952 in a play directed by Joshua Logan, and in 1955 made his film debut in the Logan-directed movie version of Picnic. As Joan Crawford's schizophrenic boyfriend in Autumn Leaves (1955), Robertson achieved the critical acceptance that would enable him to seek out choice film roles. In 1963, Robertson became the first American actor to portray a living American president when he was selected to play John F. Kennedy in PT 109; one year later, he showed up as a paranoid Nixon type in The Best Man. Equally busy on television, Robertson was universally applauded for his grueling performance as an alcoholic in the 1958 TV staging of Days of Wine and Roses, and in 1965 won an Emmy for a guest appearance on the dramatic anthology Bob Hope Chrysler Theatre. Having lost the film version of Wine and Roses to Jack Lemmon, Robertson made certain that he'd star in the filmization of his 1961 TV drama The Two Worlds of Charly Gordon by buying up the story rights. The result was the 1968 film Charly, in which Robertson played a retarded adult turned into a genius by a scientific experiment -- for which he won an Academy Award. In 1977, Robertson made headlines when he was one of the whistle-blowers in the embezzlement scandal involving Columbia executive David Begelman -- a fact that did more harm to Robertson's career than Begelman's. Robertson continued to act into the 2000s, including the recurring role of Ben Parker in the Spider-Man franchise reboot. He died of natural causes a day after his 88th birthday in 2011.

Trivia: Voluptuous "B"-movie actress Edy Williams started out with small, decorative roles in such films as The Naked Kiss (1964) and A House is Not a Home (1964), and such TV series as Batman and The Beverly Hillbillies. Her career really took off in the mid-1960s, when she became the protégé and briefly the wife, of nudie-movie king Russ Meyer. When Meyer briefly became the darling of the intelligentsia, he took Williams along for the ride, giving her starring roles in his major-studio releases Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) and The Seven Minutes (1971). Williams didn't seem to have any pretensions about her thespic abilities; she flaunted and revelled in her sexpot status, going so far as to pose for publicity photos in the freezer of a butcher shop. She was only sporadically active in films in the 1980s and 1990s, but as she enters her sixth decade, Edy Williams is assured yearly newspaper space for her flamboyant, outrageously outfitted appearances at the annual Cannes Film Festival and Academy Awards ceremonies.

Trivia: American actor George Murdock's uneven facial features enabled him to play many an offbeat part in his early professional years, none more offbeat than the ventriloquist's dummy come to life in the 1962 Twilight Zone episode "The Dummy." Murdock went on to play obnoxious and intrusive authority figures. He made Sammy Jackson's life hell as Captain Krupnick in the 1964 sitcom version of No Time for Sergeants, and fifteen years later did same for Hal Linden as an internal-affairs snoop on Barney Miller. In his later years, Murdock landed one of his best-known parts, as God in the disastrous Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.