Trivia: One of the postwar era's most successful actors, Gregory Peck was long the moral conscience of the silver screen; almost without exception, his performances embodied the virtues of strength, conviction, and intelligence so highly valued by American audiences. As the studios' iron grip on Hollywood began to loosen, he also emerged among the very first stars to declare his creative independence, working almost solely in movies of his own choosing. Born April 5, 1916, in La Jolla, CA, Peck worked as a truck driver before attending Berkeley, where he first began acting. He later relocated to New York City and was a barker at the 1939 World's Fair. He soon won a two-year contract with the Neighborhood Playhouse. His first professional work was in association with a 1942 Katherine Cornell/Guthrie McClintic ensemble Broadway production of The Morning Star. There Peck was spotted by David O. Selznick, for whom he screen-tested, only to be turned down. Over the next year, he played a double role in The Willow and I, fielding and rejecting the occasional film offer. Finally, in 1943, he accepted a role in Days of Glory, appearing opposite then-fiancée Tamara Toumanova. While the picture itself was largely dismissed, Peck found himself at the center of a studio bidding war. He finally signed with 20th Century Fox, who cast him in 1944's The Keys of the Kingdom - a turn for which he snagged his first of many Oscar nods. From the outset, he enjoyed unique leverage as a performer; he refused to sign a long-term contract with any one studio, and selected all of his scripts himself. For MGM, he starred in 1945's The Valley of Decision, a major hit. Even more impressive was the follow-up, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, which co-starred Ingrid Bergman. Peck scored a rousing success with 1946's The Yearling (which brought him his second Academy Award nomination) and followed this up with another smash, King Vidor's Duel in the Sun. His third Oscar nomination arrived via Elia Kazan's 1947 social drama Gentleman's Agreement, a meditation on anti-Semitism which won Best Picture honors. For the follow-up, Peck reunited with Hitchcock for The Paradine Case, one of the few flops on either's resumé. He returned in 1948 with a William Wellman Western, Yellow Sky, before signing for a pair of films with director Henry King, Twelve O'Clock High (earning Best Actor laurels from the New York critics and his fourth Oscar nod) and The Gunfighter. After Captain Horatio Hornblower, Peck appeared in the Biblical epic David and Bathsheba, one of 1951's biggest box-office hits. Upon turning down High Noon, he starred in The Snows of Kilimanjaro. To earn a tax exemption, he spent the next 18 months in Europe, there shooting 1953's Roman Holiday for William Wyler. After filming 1954's Night People, Peck traveled to Britain, where he starred in a pair of features for Rank -- The Million Pound Note and The Purple Plain -- neither of which performed well at the box office; however, upon returning stateside he starred in the smash The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. The 1958 Western The Big Country was his next major hit, and he quickly followed it with another, The Bravados. Few enjoyed Peck's portrayal of F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1959's Beloved Infidel, but the other two films he made that year, the Korean War drama Pork Chop Hill and Stanley Kramer's post-apocalyptic nightmare On the Beach, were both much more successful. Still, 1961's World War II adventure The Guns of Navarone topped them all -- indeed, it was among the highest-grossing pictures in film history. A vicious film noir, Cape Fear, followed in 1962, as did Robert Mulligan's classic adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird; as Atticus Finch, an idealistic Southern attorney defending a black man charged with rape, Peck finally won an Academy Award. Also that year he co-starred in the Cinerama epic How the West Was Won, yet another massive success. However, it was to be Peck's last for many years. For Fred Zinneman, he starred in 1964's Behold a Pale Horse, miscast as a Spanish loyalist, followed by Captain Newman, M.D., a comedy with Tony Curtis which performed only moderately well. When 1966's Mirage and Arabesque disappeared from theaters almost unnoticed, Peck spent the next three years absent from the screen. When he returned in 1969, however, it was with no less than four new films -- The Stalking Moon, MacKenna's Gold, The Chairman, and Marooned -- all of them poorly received.The early '70s proved no better: First up was I Walk the Line, with Tuesday Weld, followed the next year by Henry Hathaway's Shootout. After the failure of the 1973 Western Billy Two Hats, he again vanished from cinemas for three years, producing (but not appearing in) The Dove. However, in 1976, Peck starred in the horror film The Omen, an unexpected smash. Studio interest was rekindled, and in 1977 he portrayed MacArthur. The Boys From Brazil followed, with Peck essaying a villainous role for the first time in his screen career. After 1981's The Sea Wolves, he turned for the first time to television, headlining the telefilm The Scarlet and the Black. Remaining on the small screen, he portrayed Abraham Lincoln in the 1985 miniseries The Blue and the Grey, returning to theater for 1987's little-seen anti-nuclear fable Amazing Grace and Chuck. Old Gringo followed two years later, and in 1991 he co-starred in a pair of high-profile projects, the Norman Jewison comedy Other People's Money and Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear. Fairly active through the remainder of the decade, Peck appeared in The Portrait (1993) and the made-for-television Moby Dick (1998) while frequently narrating such documentaries as Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick (1995) and American Prophet: The Story of Joseph Smith (2000).On June 12, 2003, just days after the AFI named him as the screen's greatest hero for his role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, Gregory Peck died peacefully in his Los Angeles home with his wife Veronique by his side. He was 87.

Trivia: Over the course of a career that spanned seven decades, Omar Sharif played every ethnic type imaginable: Spanish, Mongolian, Yugoslavian, Turkish, Russian, Jewish, Argentinian, Mexican, and -- most improbably -- a German serving as a Nazi officer (in 1967's Night of the Generals). That was the nature of his smoldering, swarthy good looks: Every race wanted to claim him as their own. The first Arab actor to achieve worldwide fame, Sharif nonetheless could never match the splash he made with two of his earliest English-language features, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.Omar Sharif was born Michel Demetri Shalhoub on April 10, 1932, to a well-to-do Lebanese Christian family in Alexandria, Egypt. His father was a lumber merchant, while his mother was a socialite whose guests included King Farouk (and who sent her pudgy son to a British-style boarding school so he would lose weight eating the blander food.) He had a natural intelligence for numbers and language, and by the time he graduated from Cairo University with a degree in mathematics and physics, he could speak five languages (including Arabic, English, and French). After graduation, he worked alongside his father in the family lumber business, but his unused talents made him restless for bigger success.Egypt was known as "the Hollywood of the Middle East" in the 1950s, producing more than 100 Arabic-language films a year. Hoping to break into the movies, Shalhoub chose the new moniker "Omar Sharif"; he reasoned Westerners would be familiar with Gen. Omar Bradley, and "Sharif" was similar to "sheriff." In 1954, director Youssef Chahine offered his friend a part in Shaytan Al-Sahra ("Devil of the Desert"), followed by a leading role in Siraa Fil-Wadi ("Struggle to the Valley") opposite Egyptian actress Faten Hamama, a pretty girl-next-door type who had been beloved by Cairo audiences ever since her debut as a child star. A romance soon blossomed between the co-stars; Sharif eventually converted to Islam in order to marry her, and Hamama allowed him to kiss her onscreen, which she had not agreed to do with any other co-star. The duo made seven more movies together, and had a son named Tarek in 1957.Sharif's smoldering yet dignified box-office appeal spread from Egypt to European art-house cinemas, and eventually caught the attention of British director David Lean, who was casting Arabic actors for his biopic of T.E. Lawrence. Sharif's fluency in English put him ahead of the rest of the contenders, and he won the role of Sherif Ali Ibn El Karish in Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Even though the 100-day shoot in the desert -- "without women," the actor later lamented -- tried the entire cast's patience, Sharif enjoyed working under Lean and earned the respect of the notoriously actor-hating director through his dedication. Similarly, Sharif became great friends with Peter O'Toole, declaring that he and his co-star were "like brothers" who, after shooting wrapped, vowed to work together again should any occasion arise.Sharif's role in Lawrence of Arabia made him an international star and won him Golden Globes for Best Supporting Actor and Most Promising Newcomer, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Doctor Zhivago (1965), his next film for Lean (which included a cameo by his son Tarek as the younger version of his character), cemented his position as a superstar. Doctor Zhivago was an unprecedented smash, making more than 100 million dollars at the box office (over 750 million today, when adjusted for inflation), and earning ten Academy Award nominations and five wins.These two blockbusters made Sharif a star, but he considered it a devil's bargain. Without an agent to act on his behalf, he signed a seven-year contract with Columbia that put his fee at what some sources say was as low as 15,000 dollars per film -- even for hits like Funny Girl (1968). Long sojourns in Europe and the U.S. took him away from Hamama and their son, and a combination of political difficulties reentering Egypt and temptations while away from home weakened their marriage. Acknowledging that Hamama was the love of his life, but paradoxically rationalizing that it would be better to leave her while she was relatively young and could remarry, the pair divorced in 1974.As Sharif's career began a slow downward slide in the mid-'70s, with roles in stinkers like Oh, Heavenly Dog! (1980) and Inchon (1981), his personal life also became cluttered with flings, including one with Italian journalist Paola De Luca that led to a son named Ruben. Rather than concentrate on acting, Sharif instead devoted more and more time to his passion for the card game bridge, writing several books and a syndicated newspaper column about the strategy of the game, as well as lending his name to video-game simulations. He eventually became one of the highest-ranked bridge players in the world, and his love for the game was so great that sometimes he would refuse film roles because the shooting schedule conflicted with bridge tournaments.While Sharif's last decades were mostly devoted to a laissez-faire lifestyle as an intercontinental playboy, living in hotels and frequenting casinos, he did make some onscreen appearances. He played a supporting role in 2004's Hidalgo (in which he demanded -- and received -- rewrites for dialogue he found insulting toward Muslims) and narrated the epic-fantasy film 10,000 B.C. (2008). But his final cinematic triumph was in Monsieur Ibrahim (2003), a heartfelt coming-of-age drama set in 1950s Paris about the unlikely friendship between a kindly Muslim shopkeeper and a Jewish teen. The movie earned praise from critics and won Sharif a Best Actor Award at the Venice Film Festival and a Best Actor César (the French equivalent of the Oscars).His last years were, regrettably, marred by colorful public incidents, including headbutting a policeman in a casino in suburban Paris and punching a parking-lot attendant in Beverly Hills. But this churlish behavior might have been a harbinger of Alzheimer's disease, which blackened his final days. After completing a swan-song cameo in The Secret Scripture with his grandson Omar Sharif Jr., and only six months following the death of Faten Hamama, the woman he still regarded as "the love of my life," Sharif succumbed to a fatal heart attack in Cairo on July 10, 2015.

Trivia: American actor Telly Savalas was born into a transplanted Greek family in Garden City, New York. After dropping out of Columbia University, Savalas served in World War II, from which he was discharged with a Purple Heart disability. Though not a performer himself, Savalas remained active in show business via the Information Services of the State Department, which led to a news director post at the ABC network. Savalas was often called upon to help producers locate foreign-speaking actors for the various live TV dramatic series of the era. In 1959, Savalas attended an audition for the CBS anthology series Armstrong Circle Theatre, intending to prompt an actor friend who was up for a role. Instead, the casting director took Savalas's sinister demeanor (and bald head) into account and cast him in a character part, which led to other TV assignments. The 1960-61 CBS television anthology Witness, though not a ratings success, brought the novice actor a great deal of acclaim for his portrayal of racketeer Lucky Luciano, gaining attention from audiences, producers, and even a few of Luciano's old associates (who liked the show). More TV and movie roles of a slimy-villain nature followed, and then Savalas was cast as Burt Lancaster's fellow Alcatraz inmate in The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) -- a performance that earned an Oscar nomination. Many in the industry felt that Savalas had what it took to be a leading man; Imogene Coca, with whom Savalas worked on an episode of Coca's TV series "Grindl," announced publicly that the actor was one of the funniest men she'd ever met (this from an actress who once costarred with Sid Caesar). Still, producers continued to use Savalas as a supporting bad guy. Even in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Savalas incurred audience hisses as Pontius Pilate. In 1973 Savalas starred as police lieutenant Theo Kojak in The Marcus-Nelson Murders, a TV movie based on a real-life homicide. The actor's fully rounded interpretation of the sarcastic, incorruptible, lollipop-sucking New York detective earned him a full time TV job as the star of the series Kojak (which ran from 1973-78 on CBS, and, in a brief revival, 1989-90 on ABC). Now a genuine, 14-carat celebrity, Savalas assumed a great deal of creative control on Kojak, which included full script approval, choice of directors, and the insistence upon casting Savalas's brother George (professionally named "Demosthenes") in the role of Detective Stavros. Kojak lasted until 1978, during which time Savalas became a fixture of TV variety shows, where he frequently demonstrated his questionable singing talents. After the series, the actor embarked on a globe-trotting existence involving numerous forgettable European films and a sumptuous bon vivant lifestyle (which included the squiring of several attractive and much-younger ladies). Savalas periodically revived the character of Kojak in a few 1980s TV movies and profited from the (brief) revival of the Kojak series itself, but for the most part he was seen on the tube as spokesman for a high-priced credit card company. In the early 1990s, Savalas developed prostate cancer, ultimately succumbing to the disease at the age of 72.

Trivia: Swedish actress Camilla Sparv was brought to Hollywood by Columbia Pictures in 1965. Sparv was third-billed as Sister Constance in The Trouble With Angels (1966), then was consigned to a string of standard sexy-foreigner roles. At least she was permitted to utter the best line in the 1967 "Matt Helm" espionager Murderer's Row; cast as the mistress of villain Karl Malden, Sparv comforted her lover after his latest doomsday device has failed by murmuring "Cheer up. Maybe you can run someone over on the way home." Outside of her brief starring career, Camilla Sparv's chief claim to fame was as one of producer Robert Evans' four wives.

Trivia: Actor Keenan Wynn was the son of legendary comedian Ed Wynn and actress Hilda Keenan, and grandson of stage luminary Frank Keenan. After attending St. John's Military Academy, Wynn obtained his few professional theatrical jobs with the Maine Stock Company. After overcoming the "Ed Wynn's Son" onus (his father arranged his first job, with the understanding that Keenan would be on his own after that), Wynn developed into a fine comic and dramatic actor on his own in several Broadway plays and on radio. He was signed to an MGM contract in 1942, scoring a personal and professional success as the sarcastic sergeant in 1944's See Here Private Hargrove (1944). Wynn's newfound popularity as a supporting actor aroused a bit of jealousy from his father, who underwent professional doldrums in the 1940s; father and son grew closer in the 1950s when Ed, launching a second career as a dramatic actor, often turned to his son for moral support and professional advice. Wynn's film career flourished into the 1960s and 1970s, during which time he frequently appeared in such Disney films as The Absent-Minded Professor (1960) and The Love Bug (1968) as apoplectic villain Alonso Hawk. Wynn also starred in such TV series as Troubleshooters and Dallas. Encroaching deafness and a drinking problem plagued Wynn in his final years, but he always delivered the goods onscreen. Wynn was the father of writer/director Tracy Keenan Wynn and writer/actor Edmund Keenan (Ned) Wynn.

Trivia: American actress Julie Newmar's father was a college instructor and her mother was a former Ziegfeld dancer. This odd mix may explain why Julie complemented her dancing and acting career with offscreen intellectual pursuits. A lifelong student of ballet, Newmar was accepted as a dancer by the Los Angeles Opera Comany at age 15, and before her UCLA enrollment was under way she'd left college to try her luck in films. A stint as a gold-painted exotic dancer in Serpent of the Nile (1954) was usually conveniently ignored by Newmar's biographers, who preferred to list Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) as her screen debut. From here it was on to Broadway for a featured dance in the musical Can-Can, then to the sizable but nonspeaking role of Stupefyin' Jones in Li'l Abner. It was for Newmar's performance as a Swedish sexpot in the genteel farce The Marriage-Go-Round that the actress attained true stardom - and also won a Tony Award. Recreating her stage roles for the film versions of Li'l Abner (1959) and Marriage-Go-Round (1961), Newmar spent the next few years dividing her time between stage work and TV guest spots (she played the Devil in the 1963 "Twilight Zone" episode "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville"). In 1964, Newmar was cast as a beautiful robot on the TV sitcom "My Living Doll," a series that languished opposite "Bonanza" and barely got through the season. According to Newmar, she accepted her best-remembered TV role, that of Catwoman on the weekly series Batman on the advice of her brother, a Harvard fellow in Physics who, along with his classmates, was a rabid Batman fan. Newmar played Catwoman for two seasons, but contractual committments kept her from appearing in the 1966 feature film version of Batman, wherein her role was taken over by Lee Meriwether. For diverse reasons, Newmar wasn't back as Catwoman for the final "Batman" season, so Eartha Kitt essayed the role. Newmar's film career peaked with MacKenna's Gold (1968) and The Maltese Bippy (1969), after which she was consigned to such deathless projects as Hysterical (1983), Nudity Required (1990) and Ghosts Can't Do It (1991). In 1995 she returned to the big screen playing herself in the cross-dressing comedy To Wong Foo, Thanks for everything, Julie Newmar. In the mid 1980s, Julie Newmar began making the personal-appearance rounds thanks to the publicity attending the 20th anniversary of the "Batman" series, and in 1992 Julie was again an interview subject as a byproduct of Michelle Pfeiffer's unforgettable Catwoman stint in the 1992 feature film Batman Returns.

Trivia: An unusually bright child, Ted Cassidy was in the third grade by the time he was six years old. This alone was enough to set Cassidy apart from his classmates, but there was something else that made him "different": By the time he was an 11-year-old high school freshman, he was 6'1". A natural for the school's football and basketball team, Cassidy was also the target of harassment from his older, smaller fellow students. Developing an interest in dramatics while attending college, he went out of his way to play characters of all physical types and sizes; he may well have been the only 6'9" Falstaff in theatrical history. Though offered a singing job with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, Cassidy decided on a career as a radio announcer. Upon returning to acting, he landed the first role for which he auditioned: Lurch, the lumbering, monosyllabic butler on the TV comedy series The Addams Family (1964-1965). Though grateful for the opportunity, the sensitive Cassidy bemoaned the fact that he seemed doomed to forever play inarticulate giants. He went on to provide the voice and physical model for Injun Joe on The New Adventures of Huck Finn, a 1968 animation/live-action hybrid produced by Hanna-Barbera, and also supplied the voice of "the Thing" on H-B's Saturday morning cartoon series The Fantastic Four. Though limited in his choice of screen roles, Ted Cassidy played outlaw Harvey Logan in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Trivia: American character actor of stage, screen, and TV Lee J. Cobb, born Leo Jacob or Jacoby, was usually seen scowling and smoking a cigar. As a child, Cobb showed artistic promise as a virtuoso violinist, but any hope for a musical career was ended by a broken wrist. He ran away from home at age 17 and ended up in Hollywood. Unable to find film work there, he returned to New York and acted in radio dramas while going to night school at CCNY to learn accounting. Returning to California in 1931, he made his stage debut with the Pasadena Playhouse. Back in New York in 1935, he joined the celebrated Group Theater and appeared in several plays with them, including Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy. He began his film career in 1937, going on to star and play supporting roles in dozens of films straight through to the end of his life. Cobb was most frequently cast as menacing villains, but sometimes appeared as a brooding business executive or community leader. His greatest triumph on stage came in the 1949 production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman in which he played the lead role, Willy Loman (he repeated his performance in a 1966 TV version). Between 1962-66, he also appeared on TV in the role of Judge Garth in the long-running series The Virginian. He was twice nominated for "Best Supporting Actor" Oscars for his work in On the Waterfront (1954) and The Brothers Karamazov (1958).

Trivia: As one of several sons of the owner of Toronto's Massey/Harris Agricultural Implement Company, Raymond Massey was expected to distinguish himself in business or politics or both (indeed, one of Raymond's brothers, Vincent Massey, later became Governor General of Canada). But after graduating form Oxford University, Massey defied his family's wishes and became an actor. He made his first stage appearance in a British production of Eugene O'Neill's In the Zone in 1922. By 1930, Massey was firmly established as one of the finest classical actors on the British stage; that same year he came to Broadway to play the title role in Hamlet. In 1931, Massey starred in his first talking picture, The Speckled Band, portraying Sherlock Holmes. One year later, he was co-starred with Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Stuart and Ernst Thesiger in his first Hollywood film, the classic The Old Dark House (1932). Returning to England, Massey continued dividing his time between stage and screen, offering excellent performances in such major motion-picture efforts as The Scarlet Pimpernal (1935) and Things to Come (1936). In 1938, he was cast in his most famous role: Abraham Lincoln, in Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway production Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Massey repeated his Lincoln characterization in the 1940 film version of the Sherwood play, and 22 years later played a cameo as Honest Abe in How the West Was Won (1962). Refusing to allow himself to be pigeonholed as Lincoln, Massey played the controversial abolitionist John Brown in both Santa Fe Trail (1940) and Seven Angry Men (1955), and gave an effectively straight-faced comic performance as mass murderer Jonathan Brewster (a role originally written for Boris Karloff) in Frank Capra's riotous 1941 filmization of Arsenic And Old Lace. Though he would portray a wisecracking AWOL Canadian soldier in 1941's 49th Parallel and a steely-eyed Nazi officer in 1943's Desperate Journey, Massey served valiantly in the Canadian Army in both World Wars. On television, Massey played "Anton the Spymaster", the host of the 1955 syndicated anthology I Spy; and, more memorably, portrayed Dr. Gillespie in the 1960s weekly Dr. Kildare. An inveterate raconteur, Massey wrote two witty autobiographies, When I Was Young and A Thousand Lives (neither of which hinted at his legendary on-set contentiousness). Married three times, Raymond Massey was the father of actors Daniel and Anne Massey.

Trivia: Originally a newspaper reporter, Burgess Meredith came to the screen in 1936, repeating his stage role in Winterset, a part written for him by Maxwell Anderson. Meredith has had a long and varied film career, playing everything from George in Of Mice and Men (1939) to Sylvester Stallone's trainer in Rocky (1976). He received Oscar nominations for The Day of the Locust (1975) and Rocky. As comfortable with comedy as with drama, Meredith also appeared in Idiot's Delight (1939); Second Chorus (1940), with Fred Astaire; Diary of a Chambermaid (1942), which he also wrote and produced; The Story of G.I. Joe (1945); and Mine Own Executioner (1947). He also directed Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949). On television, he made countless guest appearances in dozens of dramatic and variety productions, including one of the first episodes of The Twilight Zone, the touching Time Enough at Last, and as host on the first episode of Your Show of Shows. He was a regular on Mr. Novak (1963-64) and Search (1972-73), hosted Those Amazing Animals (1981), co-starred with Sally Struthers in Gloria (1982-83), and made classic appearances as the Penguin on Batman (1966-68). He won an Emmy in 1977 for Tailgunner Joe and has done voiceover work for innumerable commercials, notably Volkswagen. Meredith made his final feature film appearance playing crusty Grandpa Gustafson in Grumpier Old Men (1995), the sequel to Grumpy Old Men (1993) in which he also appeared. In 1996, he played a role in the CD-rom video game Ripper. He was briefly married to Paulette Goddard in the 1940s. Meredith died in his Malibu home at the age of 88 on September 9, 1997.

Trivia: When Anthony Quayle appeared in films about war and espionage, he performed brilliantly, earning critical acclaim. And no wonder. Quayle had served as a spy in Albania during World War II, snooping around corners into Nazi business and rising to the rank of major for his contributions to the allied effort. His war experience primed him well for roles in such productions as The Battle of the River Plate (1956), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Operation Crossbow (1965), and 21 Hours at Munich (1976). In time, he gained a reputation as one of the 20th century's best-trained character actors, performing in productions in virtually every genre and in every medium -- stage, film, television, and audiocassette. But being well prepared for acting roles was nothing new for Quayle. As a young man, he had trained long and hard to hone his thespian skills, attending the best schools and apprenticing with the best acting companies. Quayle was born on September 7, 1913, in Ainsdale, Sefton, England, where his father was a lawyer. After attending the Rugby secondary school, he received further training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, then performed in minor roles in stage and film productions before his military service. After the war, he appeared on-stage in Dostoyevksy's Crime and Punishment with John Gielgud and Edith Evans, then joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre company at Stratford-upon-Avon. In 1948, he played Marcellus in Laurence Olivier's Academy award-winning film production of Hamlet. Between 1948 and 1956, Quayle served as director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, laying the groundwork for the founding of the famed Royal Shakespeare Company. Quayle went on to perform in some of the best-known films of all time, many of them historical epics, including Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), and Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), in which he earned an Academy award nomination for his portrayal of Cardinal Wolsey, lord chancellor of England under Henry VIII. He also played major roles in important TV miniseries such as Great Expectations (1974), Moses the Lawgiver (1975), The Story of David (1976), and Masada (1981). In addition, Quayle narrated films, wrote two books (Eight Hours From England and On Such a Night), made audiocassettes, and continued to perform in stage productions in London and New York. What made Quayle special was his discipline and intensity. Watch him in any of his films and you will see a man consumed by his role, a man who abandons his own identity to assume another's. In performance, he is always busy, preoccupied, his brow furrowed by the concerns of his character. Fittingly, he was pronounced a knight of the realm in 1985 for his acting achievements. Four years later, on October 20, 1989, he died of cancer in London. He had been married to Dorothy Hysen (1947-1989) and Hermione Hannen (1934-1941).

Trivia: Born Emmanuel Goldenberg, Edward G. Robinson was a stocky, forceful, zesty star of Hollywood films who was best known for his gangsters roles in the '30s. A "little giant" of the screen with a pug-dog face, drawling nasal voice, and a snarling expression, he was considered the quintessential tough-guy actor. Having emigrated with his family to the U.S. when he was ten, Robinson planned to be a rabbi or a lawyer, but decided on an acting career while a student at City College, where he was elected to the Elizabethan Society. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on a scholarship, and, in 1913, began appearing in summer stock after changing his name to "Edward G." (for Goldenberg). Robinson debuted on Broadway in 1915, and, over the next 15 years, became a noted stage character actor, even co-writing one of his plays, The Kibitzer (1929). He appeared in one silent film, The Bright Shawl (1923), but not until the sound era did he begin working regularly in films, making his talkie debut in The Hole in the Wall (1929) with Claudette Colbert. It was a later sound film, 1930's Little Caesar, that brought him to the attention of American audiences; portraying gangster boss Rico Bandello, he established a prototype for a number of gangster roles he played in the ensuing years. After being typecast as a gangster he gradually expanded the scope of his roles, and, in the '40s, gave memorable "good guy" performances as in a number of psychological dramas; he played federal agents, scientists, Biblical characters, business men, bank clerks, among other characters. The actor experienced a number of personal problems during the '50s. He was falsely linked to communist organizations and called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (eventually being cleared of all suspicion). Having owned one of the world's largest private art collections, he was forced to sell it in 1956 as part of a divorce settlement with his wife of 29 years, actress Gladys Lloyd. Robinson continued his career, however, which now included television work, and he remained a busy actor until shortly before his death from cancer in 1973. His final film was Soylent Green (1973), a science fiction shocker with Charlton Heston. Two months after his death, Robinson was awarded an honorary Oscar "for his outstanding contribution to motion pictures," having been notified of the honor before he died. He was also the author of a posthumously published autobiography, All My Yesterdays (1973).

Trivia: Long before earning his B.A. from the University of Texas and his M.A. in Education from C.C.N.Y., Eli Wallach made his first on-stage appearance in a 1930 amateur production. After World War II service and intensive training at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, the bumpy-nosed, gravel-voiced Wallach debuted on Broadway in Skydrift (1945). In 1951, he won a Tony award for his portrayal of Alvaro Mangiaco in Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo. Though a staunch advocate of "The Method," Wallach could never be accused of being too introspective on-stage; in fact, his acting at times was downright ripe -- but deliciously so. He made his screen debut in Baby Doll (1956) playing another of Tennessee Williams' abrasive Latins, in this instance the duplicitous Silva Vaccaro; this performance earned Wallach the British equivalent of the Oscar. He spent the bulk of his screen time indulging in various brands of villainy, usually sporting an exotic accent (e.g., bandit leader Calvera in The Magnificent Seven [1960]). Perhaps his most antisocial onscreen act was the kidnapping of Hayley Mills in The Moon-Spinners (1965). Even when playing someone on "our" side, Wallach usually managed to make his character as prickly as possible: a prime example is Sgt. Craig in The Victors (1963), who manages to be vituperative and insulting even after his face is blown away. Busy on stage, screen, and TV into the 1990s, Wallach has played such unsavory types as a senile, half-blind hitman in Tough Guys (1986) and candy-munching Mafioso Don Altobello in The Godfather III (1990). He continued to work steadily into the 1990s with parts in the Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes, the remake of Night and the City, Article 99, and narrating a number of documentaries. He didn't slow down much at all during the 21st century, appearing in the comedy Keepin the Faith, Clint Eastwood's Oscar Winning Mystic River, and The Hoax. In 2010 he acted for Roman Polanski in his thriller The Ghost Writer, and for Oliver Stone in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which was to be his last film role; Wallach died in 2014 at age 98.His television work has included an Emmy-winning performance in the 1967 all-star TV movie The Poppy Is Also a Flower and the continuing role of mob patriarch Vincent Danzig in Our Family Honor. Married since 1948 to actress Anne Jackson, Wallach has appeared on-stage with his wife in such plays as The Typists and the Tiger, Luv, and Next, and co-starred with her in the 1967 comedy film The Tiger Makes Out. Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson are the parents of special effects director Peter Wallach.

Trivia: Italian-born actor Eduardo Ciannelli was mostly known for his sinister gangster roles, but he first rose to fame as an opera singer and musical comedy star! The son of a doctor who operated a health spa, Ciannelli was expected to follow his father's footsteps into the medical profession, and to that end studied at the University of Naples. Launching his career in grand opera as a baritone, Ciannelli came to the U.S. after World War I, where he was headlined in such Broadway productions as Rose Marie and Lady Billy. He switched to straight acting with the Theatre Guild in the late 1920s, co-starring with luminaries like the Lunts and Katherine Cornell. Cianelli's resemblance to racketeer Lucky Luciano led to his being cast as the eloquent but deadly gangster Trock Estrella in Maxwell Anderson's Winterset, the role that brought him to Hollywood on a permanent basis (after a couple of false starts) in 1936. He followed up the film version of Winterset with a Luciano-like role in the Bette Davis vehicle Marked Women (1937), then did his best to avoid being typed as a gangster. After inducing goosebumps in Gunga Din (1939) as the evil Indian cult leader ("Kill for the love of Kali!"), Ciannelli did an about-face as the lovable, effusive Italian speakeasy owner in Kitty Foyle (1940)--and was nominated for an Oscar in the process. During the war, the actor billed himself briefly as Edward Ciannelli, and in this "guise" brought a measure of dignity to his title role in the Republic serial The Mysterious Dr. Satan (1945). He returned to Italy in the 1950s to appear in European films and stage productions, occasionally popping up in Hollywood films as ageing Mafia bosses and self-made millionaires. In 1959, he was seen regularly as a nightclub owner on the TV detective series Johnny Staccato. Had he lived, Eduardo Ciannelli would have been ideal for the starring role in 1972's The Godfather, as he proved in a similar assignment in the 1968 Mafia drama The Brotherhood.

Trivia: American actor Robert Phillips played supporting roles on television and in feature films of the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Phillips specializes in playing villains. His daughter, Barbara Livermore, is also an actress.

Trivia: While never attaining the stardom of his father, John Garfield, David Garfield has found a steady career as a working-class actor playing small supporting roles in many films since making his film debut in the '60s. For his first film appearances, the young actor billed himself as John Garfield Jr. until the early '70s. His sister, Julie Garfield, is an actress.

Trivia: Madeleine Taylor Holmes was the daughter of silent film star Taylor Holmes. She generally played small character roles in films such as Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid (1972). Her last role was playing the witch in Pumpkinhead (1988).

Trivia: American actor Trevor Bardette could truly say that he died for a living. In the course of a film career spanning three decades, the mustachioed, granite-featured Bardette was "killed off" over 40 times as a screen villain. Entering movies in 1936 after abandoning a planned mechanical engineering career for the Broadway stage, Bardette was most often seen as a rustler, gangster, wartime collaborator and murderous backwoodsman. His screen skullduggery carried over into TV; one of Bardette's best remembered video performances was as a "human bomb" on an early episode of Superman. Perhaps being something of a reprobate came naturally to Trevor Bardette -- or so he himself would claim in later years when relating a story of how, as a child, he'd won ten dollars writing an essay on "the evils of tobacco," only to be caught smoking behind the barn shortly afterward.

Trivia: After a rough-and-tumble adolescence, Victor Jory attended high school in California, studying acting with Gilmor Brown at the Pasadena Playhouse. Jory's subsequent tenure at the University of California lasted all of one year before he was bitten by wanderlust; he joined the coast guard, where he distinguished himself as a champion in several contact sports. Sharp-featured, muscular, and possessed of a rich theatrical voice, Jory made his New York stage bow in 1929, and one year later co-starred in the original Broadway production of Berkeley Square. Inaugurating his film career with Renegades (1930), Jory spent the next five decades in roles ranging from romantic leads to black-hearted villains. Highlights in his screen career include a sinister but strangely beautiful performance as Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935); the vicious Injun Joe in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938); white-trash carpetbagger Jonas Wilkerson in Gone With the Wind (1939); Texas patriot William Travis in Man of Conquest (1939); the hissable, crippled patriarch in The Fugitive Kind (1960); the taciturn father of Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962); and the ancient South American Indian chief in Papillon (1973). In 1940, Jory starred in the Columbia serial The Shadow (1940), essaying the dual role of the mind-clouding Shadow and his alter ego Lamont Cranston (with several disguise sequences along the way). The outspoken Jory was supremely confident of his talents, remarking on several occasions that he was "damn good" -- though he was tougher than any movie critic in assessing his lesser performances. He was also more than generous with young up-and-coming actors (except for self-involved "method" performers), and was a veritable fountain of Broadway and Hollywood anecdotes, some of which were actually true. An occasional theatrical director and playwright, Jory wrote the Broadway production Five Who Were Mad. On TV, Jory starred in the popular syndicated detective series Manhunt (1959-1960) and guested on dozens of other programs. Long married to actress Jean Innes, Victor Jory was the father of Jon Jory, who for many years was artistic director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Trivia: Before reaching his twentieth birthday, British film director J. Lee Thompson was an established repertory actor and playwright. He entered films as an actor in 1934, then switched to screenwriting (usually in collaboration) five years later. Lee-Thompson's directorial debut was Murder Without Crime (1950), but it was his second picture, the noirish The Yellow Balloon (1951), which established him as a bankable director of action programmers. In 1958, Lee-Thompson introduced Hayley Mills to moviegoers in the taut melodrama Tiger Bay (1958). After 1960's I Aim at the Stars, an historically questionable Werner Von Braun biopic, Lee-Thompson was given his most prestigious directing assignment to date: The international moneyspinner The Guns of Navarone (1961). Henceforth all of Lee-Thompson's projects would be expensive A-pictures, even those with B-story values and artistic aspirations like 1961's Cape Fear. The director's style veered from pristine stylishness (What a Way to Go [1964]) to appalling tastelessness (John Goldfarb Please Come Home [1966]); in general, Lee-Thompson could be counted upon for excellent box-office returns. Most of his later assignments were erratic in quality: For every McKenna's Gold (1968), there'd be a Greek Tycoon (1978). In the early '80s, J. Lee-Thompson and his Jaylee production firm hopped on the Indiana Jones bandwagon with a brace of sloppily constructed adventure films (actually one long film cut in two) based on H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines.

Trivia: Primarily a television actor, six-foot, six-inch tall Dick Peabody will be best remembered for his portrayal of Littlejohn, an enormous and innocent farmhand, on the TV series Combat that aired in the 1960s. Peabody's contributions to film were not as great, with only a handful of appearances. In late 1999, Peabody died from prostate cancer, at the age of 74.