Trivia: Robert Taylor's cumbersome given name, Spangler Arlington Brugh, can be blamed on his father, a Nebraska doctor. As a high schooler, Taylor participated on the track team, won oratory awards, and played the cello (his first love) in the school band. Attending Pomona College to study music, Taylor became involved in student theatricals, where his uncommonly good looks assured him leading roles. Spotted by an MGM talent scout, the 23-year-old Taylor was signed to a contract with that studio -- though his first film, Handy Andy (1934), would be a loanout to Fox. Taylor was given an extended, publicly distributed "screen test" when he starred in the MGM "Crime Does Not Pay" short, playing a handsome gangster who tries to avoid arrest by purposely disfiguring his face with acid. It was another loanout, to Universal for Magnificent Obsession (1935), that truly put Taylor in the matinee-idol category. Too "pretty" to be taken seriously by the critics, Taylor had to endure some humiliating reviews during his first years in films; even when delivering a perfectly acceptable performance as Armand in Camille (1936), Taylor was damned with faint praise, reviewers commenting on how "surprised" they were that he could act. Nobody liked Taylor but his public and his coworkers, who were impressed by his cooperation and his willingness to give 110 percent of himself and his time on the set. Though never a great actor, Taylor was capable of being a very good one, as even a casual glance at Johnny Eager (1942) and Bataan (1942) will confirm. Taylor's contributions to the war effort included service as an Air Force flight instructor and his narration of the 1944 documentary The Fighting Lady. His film career in eclipse during the 1950s, Taylor starred for three years in the popular weekly police series Robert Taylor's Detectives (1959-1962); and when his friend, Ronald Reagan, opted for a full-time political career in 1965, Taylor succeeded Reagan as host/narrator of the Western anthology Death Valley Days. Robert Taylor was married twice, to actresses Barbara Stanwyck (they remained good friends long after the divorce) and Ursula Theiss.

Trivia: Ava Gardner began her career first as a model, then as a contract player at MGM, where her gawky, unsophisticated demeanor was totally made over by the studio into an image of inaccessible glamour. Gardner toiled in tiny bit roles, finally getting a worthwhile one on loan-out to Universal in The Killers (1946). MGM was never very comfortable with the bad-girl persona she displayed so well in this film, and, thus, most of her starring appearances at her home studio were relatively sympathetic roles in The Hucksters (1947) and Show Boat (1951). Her cinema reputation as The World's Most Beautiful Animal (in the words of a '50s publicity campaign) was once again manifested in loan-out movies like Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) and The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952). MGM eventually came to terms with the elements that made Gardner popular, notably in the gutsy Mogambo (1953), in which she made an excellent partner to the equally earthy Clark Gable. Director George Cukor was much taken by Gardner and cast the actress in her best and most complex MGM role in Bhowani Junction (1956), in which she was torn not only by love but also clashing East Indian cultural values. Gardner was equally well served in The Barefoot Contessa (1954), which, in many ways, was a replay of her own rags-to-riches personal story. The actress was cast in some of her best parts during the '60s, notably in Seven Days in May and Night of the Iguana (both 1964), but the pace of her jet-setting lifestyle and increasing personal problems began to show. With roles and public appearances steadily decreasing, she died on January 25, 1990. She was married and divorced three times -- to Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, and Artie Shaw.

Trivia: Mel Ferrer dropped out of Princeton University in his sophomore year to become an actor in summer stock; meanwhile he worked as an editor for a small Vermont newspaper and wrote a children's book. He debuted on Broadway in 1938 as a chorus dancer; two years later, he made his debut as an actor. A bout with polio interrupted his career and lead him to work in radio, first as a small-station disc jockey and later as a writer, producer, and director of radio shows for NBC. Having not acted in any films, Ferrer directed his first movie, The Girl of the Limberlost, in 1945; the year in which he also returned to Broadway. After assisting John Ford on the film The Fugitive (1947), he debuted onscreen in Lost Boundaries (1949). Ferrer went on to appear in numerous movies, where he was usually cast as a sensitive, quiet, somewhat stiff leading man; his best-known role was as the lame puppeteer in Lili (1953). He continued to direct films, most of which were unexceptional, then began producing in the late '60s. Since 1960 he has worked primarily in Europe, appearing infrequently in American film and TV productions. His third wife was actress Audrey Hepburn, whom he directed in Green Mansions (1959). He later produced her film Wait Until Dark (1967).

Trivia: Born in a Welsh industrial village, Stanley Baker moved to London with his parents in the mid-1930s. As a juvenile player, Baker made his film debut in 1943's Undercover; one year later, he made his London stage bow in Druid's Rest. Following military service, Baker began his adult film career with All Over the Moon (1949). Thereafter he played secondary roles until attaining stardom as an over-the-hill boxer duped into a life of crime in The Good Die Young (1954). Projecting a "dangerous" image, Baker proved equally convincing as a rough-hewn hero or sadistic heavy. Finding his contract with the Rank Organisation confining, he became a free-lancer in 1959, spending the rest of his career making his own opportunities rather than depending on the generosity of others. Many of his starring films dealt with African themes, notably Zulu (1964), Dingaka (1965) and Sands of the Kalihari (1965). Forming Oakhurst Productions, Baker was his own producer for such vehicles as Robbery (1968) and The Italian Job (1969). Stanley Baker was knighted not long before his death from lung cancer in 1976.

Trivia: British actor Felix Aylmer may not be popularly known in the United States, but his was one of the longest and most prestigious careers in the 20th-century British theatre. Aylmer's first stage work was done with another theatrical giant, Sir Seymour Hicks, in 1911. Two years later, Aylmer was engaged by the then-new Birmingham Repertory, premiering as Orsino ("If music be the food of love...") in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. After World War I service, Aylmer established himself as one of the foremost interpreters of the works of George Bernard Shaw; he also concentrated on the London productions of such American plays as Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee (no partisanship here!) Aylmer made his Broadway bow in a production of Galsworthy's Loyalties, periodically returning to the states in such plays as Flashing Stream, wherein he played First Lord of the Admiralty Walter Hornsby, which some regard as his finest performance. Like most British actors, Aylmer acted in plays to feed his soul and films to pay his bills. His motion picture debut was in Escape (1930), after which he averaged a picture a year. Aylmer was seen by American audiences in such internationally popular films as The Citadel (1938), Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948), Quo Vadis (1951) and Separate Tables (1958). The actor was something of a hero to his fellow actors for his efforts in their behalf during his long tenure as president of British Equity, the performers' trade union; in 1965 Aylmer was knighted for his accomplishments. Active until his eighties, Sir Felix Aylmer made one of his last film appearances as the Judge in The Chalk Garden (1964), a role he'd originated on stage eight years earlier.

Trivia: Scottish actor Robert Urquhart appeared in a wide variety of British films. He also appeared frequently on stage, which is where he got his start in 1947. He made his feature film debut in 1952 and went on to work steadily in cinema through the late '80s. He also appeared on television, guest starring in series such as The Avengers, Secret Agent, and Hammer House of Horror. Urquhart was a regular on the series The Pathfinders and The Amazing Mr. Goodall.

Trivia: Burly, ruddy-faced Irish actor Niall MacGinnis looked as though he'd be well suited for an alley fight, but most of his film and stage roles were of an intellectual bent. Active on stage with the Old Vic, MacGinnis made his first film in 1935. For many film buffs, MacGinnis' fame rests on two dymamic leading roles. He portrayed the crafty black-arts practitioner (based on Alisteir Crowley) who falls victim to his own deviltry in the 1958 chiller Night of the Demon. And, as every Lutheran who ever attended a church-basement "movie night" well knows, Niall MacGinnis essayed the title role in the 1953 film Martin Luther.

Trivia: British character actor Alan Tilvern began his long career in small film roles with the appropriately titled The Small Voice (1948) (it's a hostage drama, but you wouldn't know it from the title). In placid anonymity, Tilvern appeared in such internationally financed films as The Black Rose (1950), Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) and Bhowani Junction (1956). Sometimes he received screen credit (as "A Sergeant" in Woody Allen's Love and Death [1975]); often he did not (as goodness knows what role in Superman: The Movie [1978]). Alan Tilvern's contribution to 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit was far from obscure; as cartoon producer R. K. Maroon, it was Tilvern who put the entire plot into motion--and wound up murdered as a result.

Trivia: Slim, ladylike British actress Dana Wynter spent most of her childhood in Rhodesia, where she attended Rhodes University as a pre-med student. An amateur preoccupation with theater led to a lifelong professional commitment; she made her first stage appearances before she turned 20, and her first film, White Corridors (1951), at 21. From 1955 through 1960 Wynter was under contract to 20th Century Fox studios in Hollywood. Usually called upon merely to exhibit cool-headed British reserve, she was given an excellent opportunity to display hysteria and near-lunacy in 1958's In Love and War. In films until the late '80s, Dana Wynter has also done a great deal of television; in 1966, she co-starred with Robert Lansing on the British-filmed espionage series The Man Who Never Was, and was cast (superbly) as Queen Elizabeth in the 1982 TV movie The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana.

Trivia: British character actor Martin Wyldeck worked steadily on stage, screen, and television for many years. He has played a variety of parts ranging from policemen to doctors to nefarious villains.

Trivia: Took a break from Emmerdale to have his knee replaced. His first job was at his father's shoe-making factory. Was diagnosed with leukaemia in the mid 90s, but can control the condition with medication. His charcter on Emmerdale has been on the show the longest. Sold his house in Wales in 2010 to move closer to the Emmerdale studios.

Trivia: Born into a well-to-do Hungarian family, Miklos Rozsa manifested an interest in music -- especially folk music -- as a young boy and was drawn to the life of a musician despite his father's best efforts to push him into a more practical field. He studied in Leipzig, Germany, under Hermann Grabner and Theodor Kroyer, and he seemed headed toward a promising career as a composer, with early successes that brought him to the attention of such figures as Charles Munch and Richard Strauss. He was drawn toward film music as a practical matter in the mid-1930s, through the example of Arthur Honegger; and in 1935, he went to work for fellow expatriate Hungarian Alexander Korda at Korda's London Films. Starting with Knight Without Armour (1937), he became a mainstay of the studio's music department, also scoring such major productions as The Four Feathers (1939) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). The latter film, which went into production just as World War II had begun, was eventually finished in Hollywood, and Rozsa was fortunate enough to be brought to the film mecca. He completed two more major scores for Korda productions That Hamilton Woman (1941) and The Jungle Book (1942), but by then was already busy on several independent productions. He also began working for Paramount, where he added significantly to Billy Wilder's early successes, including Five Graves to Cairo (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), and The Lost Weekend (1945). Rozsa's Eastern European-accented scores seemed to lend themselves to dark subject matter, including war dramas and thrillers. He received his first of three Oscars (from among 16 nominations across his career) for his work on Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), and he scored such grim war films as Zoltan Korda's Sahara (1943) and Fritz Lang's Ministry of Fear (1944). His talents were a natural fit in film noir, and Rozsa's music became almost as closely associated with the genre as John Alton's photography or Cornell Woolrich's writing for most of the 1940s, on films such as The Killers (1946) -- one theme from which subsequently was transposed, initially without credit or payment, into the Dragnet theme -- The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), and The Red House (1947). He continued to compose for the concert hall amid his film work, and one of his pieces, Theme, Variations and Finale, achieved some popularity during the 1940s. Celebrated soloists, includingJascha Heifetz, Janos Starker, and Leonard Pennario. also commissioned his pieces.In 1947, he won his second Oscar, for A Double Life (the title also subsequently became the title of his autobiography, a reference to his dual career in the concert hall and Hollywood). In 1948, Rozsa joined MGM for what eventually turned into a 15-year stay, during which he became one of the most familiar names before the public in the field of film music. His scores included the music for Madame Bovary (1949), Quo Vadis (1951), Ivanhoe (1952), Young Bess (1953), and Moonfleet (1955). Ben-Hur (1959) earned him his third Oscar and became the first Hollywood soundtrack to get a Volume 2 release on LP. As with most other members of his generation of composers, Rozsa's career slowed in the 1960s, with the decline of the big studios and the increasing reach of popular music into movie scores. El Cid (1961) marked the end of his epic film score period, and while Rozsa still got work, the resulting pictures weren't as big or impressive. He experienced a comeback in the 1970s, however, as a few old mainstays, such as Billy Wilder, continued to use his music and a new generation of filmmakers (who had grown up watching the movies that he had scored) sought him out for their films. His late-career credits included Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and Fedora, Alain Resnais's Providence, and Nicholas Meyer's Time After Time. Rozsa closed out his career with the detective/film noir parody Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), which offered him the chance to rescore scenes from films that he had worked on 30 years earlier.

Trivia: Pandro S. Berman's father Henry was general manager of Universal Pictures during Hollywood's formative years. The younger Berman spent most of the 1920s as an assistant director, learning the business from such masters as Mal St. Clair and Tod Browning. In 1930, Berman was hired as a film editor at fledgling RKO Radio Pictures, then became an assistant producer. When RKO supervising producer William LeBaron walked out during production of the ill-fated The Gay Diplomat (31), Berman took over LeBaron's responsibilities, remaining in the driver's seat until 1939. During the Berman regime, the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals hit their peak, Katharine Hepburn rose to prominence, and such RKO classics as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (39) and Gunga Din (39) came to fruition. Berman was willing to give creative people plenty of elbow room, but there were limits; having been coaxed by Katharine Hepburn and director George Cukor to push through production of the 1936 film Sylvia Scarlett, Berman reacted to the poor audience response to that film (the worst in RKO's history) by telling Hepburn and Cukor that he never wanted to see their faces again! Upset when an RKO power-play diminished his authority, Berman left for MGM in 1940, where he oversaw such productions as Ziegfeld Girl (41), National Velvet (44), Father of the Bride (50), The Blackboard Jungle (55) and Butterfield Eight (58). He survived several executive shake-ups at MGM and remained there until 1963, then went into independent production, closing out his career with the unsuccessful Move (70). The winner of the 1977 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, Pandro S. Berman became a sort of guru to film historians in his twilight years, providing crystal-clear insights into the day-to-day operations of the old Hollywood Studio System. Berman died of congestive heart failure on July 13, 1996 in his Beverly Hills home; he was 91.

Trivia: Screenwriter Talbot Jennings started out as a playwright following studies at Harvard, and the Yale Drama School. Later MGM head Irving Thalberg invited him to work for his studio. Jennings accepted and went on to work on such distinguished scripts as Mutiny on the Bounty (for which he earned an Oscar nomination), The Good Earth, Anna and the King of Siam and The Black Rose. He later worked on television scripts for such series as 77 Sunset Strip.

Trivia: A successful Broadway playwright, Langley began writing for films in the late '30s, most notably on the musicals Maytime and The Wizard of Oz. After World War Two he entered the British film industry, working on such memorable films as Trio, Scrooge (aka A Christmas Carol), Tom Brown's Schooldays, and Richard Thorpe's swashbucklers Ivanhoe and The Prisoner of Zenda. Langley began directing his own scripts in 1952 with his Dickens adaptation The Pickwick Papers; he went on to helm the sex farce Our Girl Friday (aka The Adventures of Sadie), Svengali with Donald Wolfit, and the fact-based occult drama The Search for Bridey Murphy. His later scriptwriting credits include The Vagabond King for director Michael Curtiz and Snow White and the Three Stooges.