Trivia: With his rugged good looks and icon status, Clint Eastwood was long one of the few actors whose name on a movie marquee could guarantee a hit. Less well-known for a long time (at least until he won the Academy Award as Best Director for Unforgiven), was the fact that Eastwood was also a producer/director, with an enviable record of successes. Born May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, Eastwood worked as a logger and gas-station attendant, among other things, before coming to Hollywood in the mid-'50s. After his arrival, he played small roles in several Universal features (he's the pilot of the plane that napalms the giant spider at the end of Tarantula [1955]) before achieving some limited star status on the television series Rawhide. Thanks to the success of three Italian-made Sergio Leone Westerns -- A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) -- Eastwood soon exchanged this limited status for bona fide international stardom.Upon his return to the U.S., Eastwood set up his own production company, Malpaso, which had a hit right out of the box with the revenge Western Hang 'Em High (1968). He expanded his relatively limited acting range in a succession of roles -- most notably with the hit Dirty Harry (1971) -- during the late '60s and early '70s, and directed several of his most popular movies, including 1971's Play Misty for Me (a forerunner to Fatal Attraction), High Plains Drifter (1973, which took as its inspiration the tragic NYC murder of Kitty Genovese), and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Though Eastwood became known for his violent roles, the gentler side of his persona came through in pictures such as Bronco Billy (1980), a romantic comedy that he directed and starred in. As a filmmaker, Eastwood learned his lessons from the best of his previous directors, Don Siegel and Sergio Leone, who knew just when to add some stylistic or visual flourish to an otherwise straightforward scene, and also understood the effect of small nuances on the big screen. Their approaches perfectly suited Eastwood's restrained acting style, and he integrated them into his filmmaking technique with startling results, culminating in 1993 with his Best Director Oscar for Unforgiven (1992). Also in 1993, Eastwood had another hit on his hands with In the Line of Fire. In 1995, he scored yet again with his film adaptation of the best-selling novel The Bridges of Madison County, in which he starred opposite Meryl Streep; in addition to serving as one of the film's stars, he also acted as its director and producer.Aside from producing the critical and financial misstep The Stars Fell on Henrietta in 1995, Eastwood has proven to be largely successful in his subsequent efforts. In 1997, he produced and directed the film adaptation of John Berendt's tale of Southern murder and mayhem, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and he followed that as the director, producer, and star of the same year's Absolute Power, 1999's True Crime, and 2000's Space Cowboys. With Eastwood's next movie, Blood Work (2002), many fans pondered whether the longtime actor/director still had what it took to craft a compelling film. Though some saw the mystery thriller as a fair notch in Eastwood's belt, many complained that the film was simply too routine, and the elegiac movie quickly faded at the box office. If any had voiced doubt as to Eastwood's abilities as a filmmaker in the wake of Blood Work, they were in for quite a surprise when his adaptation of the popular novel Mystic River hit screens in late 2003. Featuring a stellar cast that included Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon, Mystic River was a film that many critics and audiences cited as one of the director's finest. A downbeat meditation on violence and the nature of revenge, the film benefited not only from Eastwood's assured eye as a director, but also from a screenplay (by Brian Helgeland) that remained fairly faithful to Dennis Lehane's novel and from severely affecting performances by its three stars -- two of whom (Penn and Robbins) took home Oscars for their efforts. With Eastwood's reputation as a quality director now cemented well in place thanks to Mystic River's success, his remarkable ability to craft a compelling film was nearly beginning to eclipse his legendary status as an actor in the eyes of many. Indeed, few modern directors could exercise the efficiency and restraint that have highlighted Eastwood's career behind the camera, as so beautifully demonstrated in his 2004 follow-up, Million Dollar Baby. It would have been easy to layer the affecting tale of a young female boxer's rise from obscurity with the kind of pseudo-sentimental slop that seems to define such underdog-themed films, but it was precisely his refusal to do so that ultimately found the film taking home four of the six Oscars for which it was nominated at the 77th Annual Academy Awards -- including Best Director and Best Picture. Eastwood subsequently helmed two interrelated 2006 features that told the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from different angles. The English-language Flags of Our Fathers relayed the incident from the American end, while the Japanese-language Letters from Iwo Jima conveyed the event from a Japanese angle. Both films opened to strong reviews and were lauded with numerous critics and industry awards, with Letters capturing the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film before being nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Nowhere near slowing down, Eastwood would direct and star in the critically acclaimed Gran Torino, as well as helming critical favorites like Invictus, the Changeling, Hereafter, and J. Edgar, racking up numerous awards and nominations. In 2014, he helmed the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Jersey Boys, to mixed reviews, and the biographical adaptation American Sniper.A prolific jazz pianist who occasionally shows up to play piano at his Carmel, CA restaurant, The Hog's Breath Inn, Eastwood has also contributed songs and scores to several of his films, including The Bridges of Madison County and Mystic River. Many saw his critically championed 1988 film Bird, starring Forest Whitaker (on the life of Charlie "Bird" Parker), as the direct product of this interest. Eastwood also served as the mayor of Carmel, CA, from 1986 until 1988.

Trivia: At age 16, Inger Stevens broke into show business in a Kansas City burlesque show. She moved to New York at age 18, working in the garment center and as a chorus girl while studying theater at the Actors Studio and making the rounds of Broadway agents. She appeared in several TV commercials, leading to roles in TV dramas. In 1956 she debuted on Broadway, then made her first film in 1957. She went on to appear in a dozen or so films during the next decade-plus. Stevens achieved some popularity as the star of the '60s TV series "The Farmer's Daughter." After her death at age 36, it was later revealed that she had been secretly married since 1961 to black musician Isaac (Ike) Jones.

Trivia: Born in Connecticut to an immigrant Irish couple, Ed Begley ran away from home several times before making a complete break from both his family and his formal education at the age of 13. For the next two decades, Begley knocked around in a variety of activities, from Naval service to working as bowling alley pin boy, before obtaining an announcer's job at a Hartford radio station in 1931. Ten years later, Begley moved to New York, where he became a prolific radio actor; from 1944 through 1948, he played the title role in the radio version of Charlie Chan. His belated Broadway debut at age 43 came in a short-lived play titled Land of Fame. In 1947, Begley created the role of benighted war profiteer Joe Keller in Arthur Miller's All My Sons; that same year, he was assigned a solid supporting part in his first film, Boomerang (1947). He was a familiar figure in TV's "golden age" of the 1950s, co-starring in the original video productions of Twelve Angry Men and Patterns. In 1955, he made the first of 789 appearances as the William Jennings Bryan counterpart in the Broadway drama Inherit the Wind, co-starring first with Paul Muni and then with Melvyn Douglas. Despite his ever-increasing activity, Ed Begley was standing in the unemployment compensation line in 1961 when he was informed that he'd been Oscar-nominated for his performance in Sweet Bird of Youth. Justifiably proud of his Oscar statuette, Begley reportedly carried it with him everywhere he went, even on short airplane flights! Ed Begley died at 69 while attending a party at the home of Hollywood press agent Jay Bernstein; he was the father of popular movie and TV leading man Ed Begley Jr.

Trivia: American character actress Ruth White specialized in offbeat roles on-stage and in feature films. She started out in stock theater in the early '40s after studying acting under Maria Ouspenskaya. She made her Broadway debut in 1949 and went on to become a popular and oft-distinguished performer. White made her film debut in Edge of the City (1957). White died in 1969.

Trivia: Burly character actor Pat Hingle held down a variety of bread-and-butter jobs--mostly in the construction field--while studying at the University of Texas, the Hagen-Bergdorf studio, the Theatre Wing and the Actors Studio. Earning his Equity card in 1950, Hingle made his Broadway debut in 1953 as Harold Koble in End as a Man (he would repeat this role in the 1957 film adaptation, retitled The Strange One). One year later, he was cast as Gooper-aka "Brother Man"-in Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer-winning play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Also in 1954, he made his inaugural film appearance in On the Waterfront as a bartender. Though a familiar Broadway presence and a prolific TV actor, Hingle remained a relatively unknown film quantity, so much so that he was ballyhooed as one of the "eight new stars" in the 1957 release No Down Payment. As busy as he was before the cameras in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Hingle's first love was the theatre, where he starred in such productions as William Inge's Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Archibald MacLeish's JB, and later appeared in the one-man show Thomas Edison: Reflections of a Genius. His made-for-TV assignments include such historical personages as Colonel Tom Parker in Elvis (1979), Sam Rayburn in LBJ: The Early Years (1988), J. Edgar Hoover in Citizen Cohn (1992) and Earl Warren in Simple Justice (1993). Among his more recent big-screen assignments has been Commissioner Gordon in the Batman films. Amidst his hundreds of TV guest shots, Pat Hingle has played the regular roles of Chief Paulton in Stone (1980) and Henry Cobb in Blue Skies (1988), was briefly a replacement for Doc (Milburn Stone) on the vintage western Gunsmoke, and has shown up sporadically as the globe-trotting father of Tim Daly and Steven Weber on the evergreen sitcom Wings.

Trivia: Born Arline Golonka (she was named after 1930s film actress Arline Judge) Golonka trained as a singer and dancer from childhood and went professional in a summer-stock troupe while still in her teens. She studied at the Goodman Theatre in her native Chicago before striking out for New York, where she attended classes at the Actor's Studio and made her Broadway debut in the 1958 flop Night Circus. Her later Broadway credits include Take Me Along, Come Blow Your Horn, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; in the latter production, she played a good-natured, empty-headed hooker, a role she'd repeat with variations throughout the 1960s. Before relocating to Los Angeles in 1967 to appear in Penelope, Golonka had accumulated dozens of New York-based film credits, including the 1965 theatrical feature Harvey Middleman, Fireman (1965). Best known for her portrayal of Millie Swanson on TV's Mayberry RFD (1968-71), Arlene Golonka was also a regular on Joe and Valerie (1978-79) and has been seen in such films as Hang 'Em High (1967), The Busy Body (1968) and The In-Laws (1977).

Trivia: American actor James MacArthur was the adopted son of stage legend Helen Hayes and playwright Charles MacArthur. Despite his mother's insistence that James have a normal childhood, it was difficult not to be intoxicated by the theatre when growing up around the greatest acting and literary talent in the '40s. At age 8, young MacArthur appeared in a stock-company production of The Corn is Green. Fresh out of Harvard, MacArthur became a movie juvenile, specializing in tortured-teen roles in such films as The Young Stranger (1957) and Disney's Light in the Forest (1958). Outgrowing his somewhat charming awkwardness, MacArthur was less satisfying as a standard leading man, and by 1967 he was wasting away in pictures like The Love Ins. That same year, the pilot film for a new Jack Lord cop series, Hawaii Five-O, was screened for a test audience. The group liked the film but not the young man (Tim O'Kelly) who played Lord's assistant, deeming him too young for the part. Hawaii producer Leonard Freeman then called upon 30-year-old MacArthur, with whom Freeman had worked on the Clint Eastwood vehicle Hang 'Em High. From 1968 through 1979, MacArthur played Hawaii Five-0's detective Danny Williams, always handy whenever Jack Lord felt the need to snap "Book 'em, Danno." Though the series enriched MacArthur and made him a vital member of the Honolulu society and business world, the actor finally packed it in after 11 seasons, when it seemed as though he'd be Danno forever (the show continued for one more season). Too wealthy to care about a career at this point, James MacArthur still took an occasional role into the '80s; his most prominent post-Hawaii assignment was the 1980 TV movie Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story, in which he played a rare non-sympathetic character. MacArthur died in October 2010 of natural causes at age 72.

Trivia: Bruce MacLeish Dern is the scion of a distinguished family of politicians and men of letters that includes his uncle, the distinguished poet/playwright Archibald MacLeish. After a prestigious education at New Trier High and Choate Preparatory, Dern enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, only to drop out abruptly in favor of Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio. With his phlegmatic voice and schoolyard-bully countenance, he was not considered a likely candidate for stardom, and was often treated derisively by his fellow students. In 1958, he made his first Broadway appearance in A Touch of the Poet. Two years later, he was hired by director Elia Kazan to play a bit role in the 20th Century Fox production Wild River. He was a bit more prominent on TV, appearing regularly as E.J. Stocker in the contemporary Western series Stoney Burke. A favorite of Alfred Hitchcock, Dern was prominently cast in a handful of the director's TV-anthology episodes, and as the unfortunate sailor in the flashback sequences of the feature film Marnie (1964). During this period, Dern played as many victims as victimizers; he was just as memorable being hacked to death by Victor Buono in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965) as he was while attempting to rape Linda Evans on TV's The Big Valley. Through the auspices of his close friend Jack Nicholson, Dern showed up in several Roger Corman productions of the mid-'60s, reaching a high point as Peter Fonda's "guide" through LSD-land in The Trip (1967). The actor's ever-increasing fan following amongst disenfranchised younger filmgoers shot up dramatically when he gunned down Establishment icon John Wayne in The Cowboys (1971). After scoring a critical hit with his supporting part in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Dern began attaining leading roles in such films as Silent Running (1971), The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), and Smile (1975). In 1976, he returned to the Hitchcock fold, this time with top billing, in Family Plot. Previously honored with a National Society of Film Critics award for his work in the Jack Nicholson-directed Drive, He Said (1970), Dern received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of an unhinged Vietnam veteran in Coming Home (1978), in which he co-starred with one-time Actors' Studio colleague (and former classroom tormentor) Jane Fonda. He followed this triumph with a return to Broadway in the 1979 production Strangers. In 1982, Dern won the Berlin Film Festival Best Actor prize for That Championship Season. He then devoted several years to stage and TV work, returning to features in the strenuous role of a middle-aged long distance runner in On the Edge (1986).After a humorous turn in the 1989 Tom Hanks comedy The 'Burbs, Dern dropped beneath the radar for much of the '90s. He would appear in cult favorites like Mulholland Falls and the Walter Hill Yojimbo re-make Last Man Standing (both 1996), as well as The Haunting (1999) and All the Pretty Horses (2000). As the 2000's unfolded, Dern would continue to act, apperaing most notably in film like Monster and Django Unchained.Formerly married to actress Diane Ladd, Bruce Dern is the father of actress Laura Dern.

Trivia: The son of a patent medicine manufacturer, American actor Alan Hale chose a theatrical career at a time when, according to his son Alan Hale Jr., boarding houses would post signs reading "No Dogs or Actors Allowed." Undaunted, Hale spent several years on stage after graduating from Philadelphia University, entering films as a slapstick comedian for Philly's Lubin Co. in 1911. Bolstering his acting income with odd jobs as a newspaperman and itinerant inventor (at one point he considered becoming an osteopath!), Hale finally enjoyed a measure of security as a much-in-demand character actor in the 1920s, usually as hard-hearted villains. One of his more benign roles was as Little John in Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922), a role he would repeat opposite Errol Flynn in 1938 and John Derek in 1950. Talkies made Hale more popular than ever, especially in his many roles as Irishmen, blusterers and "best pals" for Warner Bros. Throughout his career, Hale never lost his love for inventing things, and reportedly patented or financed items as commonplace as auto brakes and as esoteric as greaseless potato chips. Alan Hale contracted pneumonia and died while working on the Warner Bros. western Montana (1950), which starred Hale's perennial screen cohort Errol Flynn.

Trivia: Character actor James Westerfield made comparatively few films, as his first love was the stage; he produced, directed and acted in a number of Broadway productions, and was the recipient of two New York Drama Critics awards. In films from 1941 (he's easily recognizable as a traffic cop in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons), he was generally cast as villains, notably as a recurring rapscallion on the 1963 TV series The Travels of Jamie McPheeters. Disney fans will remember Westerfield as the flustered small-town police officer (variously named Hanson and Morrison) in such fanciful farces as The Shaggy Dog (1959), The Absent Minded Professor (1960) and Son of Flubber (1963). James Westerfield was married to actress Fay Tracy.

Trivia: The odyssey of Dennis Hopper was one of Hollywood's longest, strangest trips. A onetime teen performer, he went through a series of career metamorphoses -- studio pariah, rebel filmmaker, drug casualty, and comeback kid -- before finally settling comfortably into the role of character actor par excellence, with a rogues' gallery of killers and freaks unmatched in psychotic intensity and demented glee. Along the way, Hopper defined a generation, documenting the shining hopes and bitter disappointments of the hippie counterculture and bringing their message to movie screens everywhere. By extension, he spearheaded a revolt in the motion picture industry, forcing the studio establishment to acknowledge a youth market they'd long done their best to deny. Born May 17, 1936 in Dodge City, Kansas, Hopper began acting during his teen years, and made his professional debut on the TV series Medic. In 1955 he made a legendary collaboration with the director Nicholas Ray in the classic Rebel Without a Cause, appearing as a young tough opposite James Dean. Hopper and Dean became close friends during filming, and also worked together on 1956's Giant. After Dean's tragic death, it was often remarked that Hopper attempted to fill his friend's shoes by borrowing much of his persona, absorbing the late icon's famously defiant attitude and becoming so temperamental that his once-bright career quickly began to wane. Seeking roles far removed from the stereotypical 'troubled teens' which previously dotted his resume, Hopper began training with the Actors Studio. However, on the set of Henry Hathaway's From Hell to Texas he so incensed cast and crew with his insistence upon multiple takes for his improvisational techniques -- the reshoots sometimes numbering upwards of 100 -- that he found himself a Hollywood exile. He spent much of the next decade mired in "B"-movies, if he was lucky enough to work at all. Producers considered him such a risk that upon completing 1960's Key Witness he did not reappear on-screen for another three years. With a noteworthy role in Hathaway's 1965 John Wayne western The Sons of Katie Elder, Hopper made tentative steps towards a comeback. He then appeared in a number of psychedelic films, including 1967's The Trip and the following year's Monkees feature Head, and earned a new audience among anti-establishment viewers.With friends Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson in front of the camera, Hopper decided to direct his own movie, and secured over $400,000 in financing to begin filming a screenplay written by novelist Terry Southern. The result was 1969's Easy Rider, a sprawling, drug-fueled journey through an America torn apart by the conflict in Vietnam. Initially rejected by producer Roger Corman, the film became a countercultural touchstone, grossing millions at the box office and proving to Hollywood executives that the ever-expanding youth market and their considerable spending capital would indeed react to films targeted to their issues and concerns, spawning a cottage industry of like-minded films. Long a pariah, Hopper was suddenly hailed as a major new filmmaker, and his success became so great that in 1971 he appeared in an autobiographical documentary, American Dreamer, exploring his life and times.The true follow-up to Easy Rider, however, was 1971's The Last Movie, an excessive, self-indulgent mess that, while acclaimed by jurors at the Venice Film Festival, was otherwise savaged by critics and snubbed by audiences. Once again Hopper was left picking up the pieces of his career; he appeared only sporadically in films throughout the 1970s, most of them made well outside of Hollywood. His personal life a shambles -- his marriage to singer/actress Michelle Phillips lasted just eight days -- Hopper spent much of the decade in a haze, earning a notorious reputation as an unhinged wild man. An appearance as a disturbed photojournalist in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now did little to repair most perceptions of his sanity. Then in 1980, Hopper traveled to Canada to appear in a small film titled Out of the Blue. At the outset of the production he was also asked to take over as director, and to the surprise of many, the picture appeared on schedule and to decent reviews. Slowly he began to restake his territory in American films, accepting roles in diverse fare ranging from 1983's teen drama Rumble Fish to the 1985 comedy My Science Project. In 1986 Hopper returned to prominence with a vengeance. His role as the feral, psychopathic Frank Booth in David Lynch's masterpiece Blue Velvet was among the most stunning supporting turns in recent memory, while his touching performance as an alcoholic assistant coach in the basketball drama Hoosiers earned an Academy Award nomination. While acclaimed turns in subsequent films like 1987's The River's Edge threatened to typecast Hopper, there was no doubting his return to Hollywood's hot list, and in 1988 he directed Colors, a charged police drama starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. While subsequent directorial efforts like 1989's Chattahoochee and 1990's film noir The Hot Spot failed to create the same kind of box office returns as Easy Rider over two decades earlier, his improbable comeback continued throughout the 1990s with roles in such acclaimed, quirky films as 1993's True Romance and 1996's Basquiat. Hopper was also the villain-du-jour in a number of Hollywood blockbusters, including 1994's Speed and the following year's Waterworld, and was even a pitchman for Nike athletic wear. He also did a number of largely forgettable films such asRon Howard's EdTV (1999). In addition, he also played writer and Beat extraordinaire William S. Burroughs in a 1999 documentary called The Source with Johnny Depp as Jack Kerouac and John Turturro as Allen Ginsberg. In 1997 Hopper was awarded the distinction of appearing 87th in Empire Magazine's list of "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time."Hopper contracted prostate cancer in the early 2000s, and died of related complications in Venice, CA, in late May 2010. He was 74 years old.

Trivia: Born in Oklahoma of Cherokee-Irish stock, Ben Johnson virtually grew up in the saddle. A champion rodeo rider in his teens, Johnson headed to Hollywood in 1940 to work as a horse wrangler on Howard Hughes' The Outlaw. He went on to double for Wild Bill Elliot and other western stars, then in 1947 was hired as Henry Fonda's riding double in director John Ford's Fort Apache (1948). Ford sensed star potential in the young, athletic, slow-speaking Johnson, casting him in the speaking role of Trooper Tyree in both She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950). In 1950, Ford co-starred Johnson with another of his protégés, Harry Carey Jr., in Wagonmaster (1950). Now regarded as a classic, Wagonmaster failed to register at the box office; perhaps as a result, full stardom would elude Johnson for over two decades. He returned periodically to the rodeo circuit, played film roles of widely varying sizes (his best during the 1950s was the pugnacious Chris in George Stevens' Shane [1953]), and continued to double for horse-shy stars. He also did plenty of television, including the recurring role of Sleeve on the 1966 western series The Monroes. A favorite of director Sam Peckinpah, Johnson was given considerable screen time in such Peckinpah gunfests as Major Dundee (1965) and The Wild Bunch (1969). It was Peter Bogdanovich, a western devotee from way back, who cast Johnson in his Oscar-winning role: the sturdy, integrity-driven movie house owner Sam the Lion in The Last Picture Show (1971). When not overseeing his huge horse-breeding ranch in Sylmar, California, Ben Johnson has continued playing unreconstructed rugged individualists in such films as My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (1991) and Radio Flyer (1992), in TV series like Dream West (1986, wherein Johnson was cast as frontier trailblazer Jim Bridger), and made-for-TV films along the lines of the Bonanza revivals of the 1990s.

Trivia: Born Robert Bradbury, he began appearing (at age 14) in semi-documentary nature shorts directed by his father, prolific silent director Robert North Bradbury; he later appeared in juvenile parts in some Westerns his father directed. In 1927 he began starring in cowboy films, maintaining his career in screen Westerns through the early '40s; he was one of the "Three Mesquiteers" in the series of that name. He also played straight dramatic roles, including the part of Curly in Of Mice and Men (1940). After the mid '40s he played character roles, appearing in films every few years until the early '70s. He was a regular on the '60s TV sitcom "F Troop."

Trivia: Though weighing in at a sylphlike 155 pounds, Jack Ging starred for three years in the backfield of the University of Oklahoma football team. After a hitch in the Marines, Ging headed to Hollywood to break into the movies. He made his film debut in The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959), then secured the continuing role of Beau McCloud on TV's Tales of Wells Fargo (1961-62). From 1962 to 1964, Ging starred as clinical psychologist Paul Graham on the NBC weekly The Eleventh Hour. Jack Ging went on to play authoritative supporting roles in three TV series: Detective Chuck Morris in Dear Detective (1979), Lt. Ted Quinlan in Riptide (1984-85) and Sheriff Hollings in PS I Luv U (1991).

Trivia: What do actors Gig Young, Anne Shirley, and L.Q. Jones have in common? All of them lifted their show-biz names from characters they'd portrayed on screen. In 1955, University of Texas alumnus Justice McQueen made his film debut in Battle Cry, playing a laconic lieutenant named L.Q. Jones. McQueen liked his character so much that he remained L.Q. Jones offscreen ever after (though he never made it legal, still listing himself as Justice Ellis McQueen in the 1995 edition of Who's Who). A natural for westerns both vocally and physically, Jones played supporting roles in several big-screen oaters, and was seen on TV as Smitty on Cheyenne (1955-58) and as Belden on The Virginian (1964-67). Jones gained a measure of prominence in the films of Sam Peckinpah, notably Ride the High Country (1961) and The Wild Bunch (1969). Turning to the production side of the business in the early 1970s, L. Q. Jones produced and co-starred in the 1971 film Brotherhood of Satan; he also co-produced, directed, adapted and played a cameo (as a porn-movie actor!) in the fascinating 1975 cinemazation of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, a tour de force that won Jones a Hugo Award from America's science fiction writers.

Trivia: Character actor Bert Freed prepared for his theatrical career at Penn State. Freed made his first Broadway appearance in the forgotten 1942 production Johnny 2 X 4, then went on to such long-running efforts as Counterattack, One Touch of Venus and Annie Get Your Gun. In films from 1947, he was most often cast as big-city detectives and small-town sheriffs. Some of his more memorable movie roles include Sgt. Boulanger in Paths of Glory (1957), Christopher Jones' institutionalized father in Wild in the Streets (1968), and all-around meanie Stuart Posner in Billy Jack (1969). A busy television actor, Freed settled down to a weekly-series grind only once, as Rufe Ryker on the 1966 video version of Shane. Outside of his performing activities, Bert Freed was for many years a member of the Motion Picture Academy's Committee of Foreign Films.

Trivia: Twice in his career, once in the late '30s and again at the end of the 1940s, it seemed as though Tod Andrews was poised for a major career, first in movies and later on Broadway. Somehow, however, he never realized the promise that was shown at those two points in his life. There is much that is mysterious about the early career of this actor who, at one time, bid fair to become another Henry Fonda; beyond the two different names that he worked under in movies, there were multiple years of birth reported, anywhere from 1914 to 1920, different places of birth, and original names ranging from John Buchanan to Ted Anderson. He was definitely raised in California, and initially took up acting (along with journalism) at Washington State College to overcome a neurotic shyness. He later joined the Pasadena Playhouse, specializing in male ingenue roles, and was seen there in the play Masque of Kings by author Maxwell Anderson, who encouraged him to continue in his acting career. He made it to New York and it was in a production of My Sister Eileen, in the role of one of the "six future admirals" from Brazil, that he was spotted by Jack L. Warner, the head of Warner Bros., and offered a screen test. He passed it, was duly signed up, and first began working in movies under the name Michael Ames. He played uncredited parts in such big-budget features as Dive Bomber and They Died With Their Boots On, and got his first screen credit in a small role in the feature International Squadron, which seemed to bode well for his future. His subsequent vehicles, however, were mostly in the B-movie category, including the Warner Bros. crime drama I Was Framed (which seemed like a warmed-over rewrite of the John Garfield vehicle Dust Be My Destiny) and Truck Busters, a cheap remake of a James Cagney vehicle that was more than a decade old. He was cast as Don Ameche's son in the big-budget 20th Century Fox fantasy-comedy Heaven Can Wait but then turned up in a pair of ultra-cheap horror thrillers, Voodoo Man and Return of the Ape Man, playing the callow male heroes in both. By this time, he was using both his Tod Andrews and Michael Ames personae, depending upon the prominence of the production, but after 1944 Michael Ames disappeared entirely. Dispirited by his first experience of Hollywood, Andrews headed for New York, where he was fortunate enough to join the Margo Jones Company, through which, in 1948, he was cast as the lead in the new Tennessee Williams play Summer and Smoke. His career on Broadway seemed headed in directions that Hollywood never afforded him; having outgrown his youthful callowness, he retained a touch of vulnerability and sensitivity that projected well on the stage. Andrews was seen during the run of the Williams play by producer/director Joshua Logan, who made note of the actor's qualities. He returned to Hollywood briefly in 1950 to play a lead role in Ida Lupino's drama Outrage and then Broadway beckoned again, with one of the best parts of the period -- Henry Fonda was set to leave the title role in the stage production of Mr. Roberts. The director, Joshua Logan, remembered Andrews, who inherited the role for the remainder of its Broadway run and the national tour that followed. Six good years followed, in which the actor enjoyed his good fortune on the stage and was never out of work. He also returned to Hollywood once more, for work in the excellent wartime drama Between Heaven and Hell for Fox. And then something bizarre happened in his career -- what it was may never be known, because all of the principals involved are gone -- Andrews, established Broadway and theatrical star, subject of columnists and feature writers, suddenly turned up the following year in the cheap Allied Artists B-horror film From Hell It Came, playing the hero-scientist battling a killer tree stump on a radioactive South Pacific island. He did well enough in the part, but this was not the sort of film -- the whole production budget was smaller than the outlay on film stock alone for Between Heaven and Hell -- that was going to enhance the professional standing of anyone with an actual career. Andrews next turned up on television, playing Colonel John Singleton Mosby in the syndicated adventure series The Gray Ghost, before returning to the theater. He seemed to be doing well enough until 1961, when, days before the opening of a new play appropriately entitled A Whiff of Melancholy, he attempted suicide. He later said that it was a result of stress over the role. He resumed his career after a convalescence and next turned up in movies in 1965, as Captain Tuthill in Otto Preminger's World War II action blockbuster In Harm's Way. He later made a small but impressive appearance as a defense attorney in Ted Post's Hang 'Em High and had an excellent scene in Post's Beneath the Planet of the Apes, as James Franciscus's stricken commanding officer. Andrews' final screen appearances were as the President of the United States in the political thriller The President's Plane Is Missing (1973), and as a doctor in the chiller The Baby, released a year later.

Trivia: American actor Jonathan Lippe played supporting roles on stage, screen and especially television. In 1975, he began appearing as Jonathan Goldsmith, his real name. His son David Goldsmith is also an actor.

Trivia: Of Latin-Native American heritage, Ned Romero began his show-business career as an opera singer in 1943. From his first film, 1966's Talisman, to his most recent, Children of the Corn 2 (1993), Romero has been typecast as an Indian, usually a chief or medicine man. He played Chingachgook in two made-for-TV James Fenimore Cooper adaptations, Deerslayer and Last of the Mohicans (both 1977). Ned Romero's other TV roles include Sgt. Joe Rivera in the 1970 Burt Reynolds cop series Dan August and assistant district attorney Bob Ramirez in the Jack Webb-produced The DA (1970-71).

Trivia: Fans of the original Star Trek and its movie spin-offs will recognize Mark Lenard for playing Sarek, the Vulcan father of first officer Mr. Spock. Lenard was also a respected theatrical actor and had appeared in other feature films and television shows. He first appeared on Star Trek as a Romulan commander in "Balance of Terror" (1966) and did not play Sarek until the following year in "Journey to Babel." He appeared a Klingon captain in Star Trek: The Movie (1979) before reprising his role as Sarek in parts III, IV and VI, as well as in two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.Lenard launched his professional career on-stage and first bowed on Broadway in Carson McCullers' Square Root of Wonderful (1957). He went on to play supporting and co-leads in many highly regarded plays, including Much Ado About Nothing opposite John Gielgud. Lenard made his feature film debut in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). Prior to that, he had played a regular role on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow during the 1959-1960 season. After Star Trek, Lenard was a supporting regular on several other television series including Here Come the Brides (1968-1970) and Planet of the Apes (1974). Lenard died of multiple myeloma at the age of 68.

Trivia: General-purpose actor Larry Blake made his screen debut playing a young Adolf Hitler in James Whale's troubled The Road Back (1937), only to see his scenes end up on the cutting room floor. A difficult actor to pigeonhole, Blake went on to play everything from cops to robbers in a long career that lasted through the late '70s and included such television shows as The Lone Ranger, The Adventures of Superman, Yancy Derringer, Perry Mason, Leave It to Beaver, Gunsmoke, The Munsters, The Beverly Hillbillies, Ironside, Little House on the Prairie, and Kojak. His son is Michael F. Blake, a well-known makeup artist and the biographer of silent screen star Lon Chaney.

Trivia: A former prize fighter and the father of one of America's best-loved actors, James Earl Jones, Robert Earl Jones is also an actor who launched his movie career in 1939, playing a small role in Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Though never achieving anything even near the fame of his son, Jones found himself a comfortable niche in Hollywood and worked steadily though the '60s, '70s, '80s, and the early '90s.

Trivia: If you were an avid television viewer throughout the 1960s and '70s, chances are good that you have fond memories of former stage star-turned-small-screen stalwart Hal England. A frequent guest-star on such television hits as Bewitched, Sanford and Son, CHiPs, and Charlie's Angels, the talented character actor could always be counted on for a memorable secondary role. A native of North Carolina who showed an affinity for the stage early on, England got his big break on Broadway while working as an understudy to Robert Morse in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. An early association with Joseph Papp's Shakespeare in the Park found England standing out in such productions as Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, with a role in the short-lived 1960 television series The Clear Horizon marking his entrance into television. In the years that followed, England would also move into feature-film territory with roles in Hang 'Em High and The Dirt Gang. Frequent appearances in such made-for-television features as The Amazing Howard Hughes and Sweet Bird of Youth also kept England busy on the small screen. In the early '90s, England could be seen in The Bonfire of the Vanities and Going Under, but the 1991 made-for-television feature Our Sons provided him with his last substantial role. On November 6, 2003, Hal England died of heart failure in Burbank, CA. He was 71.

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from 1937.

Trivia: Gravel-voiced, granite-faced stage actor Charles McGraw made his first film The Moon is Down in 1943. At first it seemed as though McGraw would spend his movie career languishing in villainy, but while working at RKO in the late 1940s-early 1950s, the actor developed into an unorthodox but fascinating leading man. His shining hour (actually 72 minutes) was the role of the embittered detective assigned to protect mob witness Marie Windsor in the 1952 noir classic The Narrow Margin. McGraw continued being cast in the raffish-hero mold on television, essaying the lead in the 1954 syndicated series Adventures of Falcon and assuming the Bogartesque role of café owner Rick Blaine in the 1955 weekly TV adaptation of Casablanca (1955) (his last regular TV work was the supporting part of Captain Hughes on the 1971 Henry Fonda starrer The Smith Family). Active until the mid-1970s, Charles McGraw growled and scowled his way through such choice character roles as gladiator trainer Marcellus in Spartacus (1960), Sebastian Sholes in Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), and The Preacher in the cult favorite A Boy and His Dog (1975).

Trivia: American actor Bill Zuckert's long career included appearances on stage, screen, radio, and television. He made his acting debut on radio in 1941. During the 1970s, he made frequent television appearances on programs ranging from Dynasty to The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Little House on the Prairie. Zuckert made his last appearance in two films of 1994, Ace Ventura, Pet Detective and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult. Zuckert was an active member of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. For the latter, he played a key role in developing a new member program. Zuckert also launched the practice of holding casting showcases for members of both guilds. Zuckert died of pneumonia in Woodland Hills, CA, at age 76.

Trivia: The son of character actor Ed Begley, Sr., he began acting while still a teenager, appearing on the TV series My Three Sons when he was 17. Begley performed as a stand-up comic at colleges and nightclubs and worked briefly as a TV cameraman before landing a string of guest appearances on TV series such as Happy Days and Columbo. He debuted onscreen in Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972), going on to play small roles in a number of minor films; by the mid '70s he was getting somewhat better roles in better films. Begley became well-known in the '80s, portraying Dr. Erlich on the TV series St. Elsewhere; for his work he received an Emmy nomination. His success on TV led to much better film roles, but he has never broken through as a big-screen star.

Trivia: One look at Alan Hale Jr. and no one could ever assume he was adopted; Hale Jr. so closely resembled his father, veteran character actor Alan Hale Sr., that at times it appeared that the older fellow had returned to the land of the living. In films from 1933, Alan Jr. was originally cast in beefy, athletic good-guy roles (at 6'3", he could hardly play hen-pecked husbands). After the death of his father in 1950, Alan dropped the "Junior" from his professional name. He starred in a brace of TV action series, Biff Baker USA (1953) and Casey Jones (1957), before his he-man image melted into comedy parts. From 1964 through 1967, Hale played The Skipper (aka Jonas Grumby) on the low-brow but high-rated Gilligan's Island. Though he worked steadily after Gilligan's cancellation, he found that the blustery, slow-burning Skipper had typed him to the extent that he lost more roles than he won. In his last two decades, Alan Hale supplemented his acting income as the owner of a successful West Hollywood restaurant, the Lobster Barrel.