Trivia: Over the course of his extraordinary life, Audie Murphy went from being a poor Texas sharecropper's son to America's most decorated WWII hero to a popular Western and action movie star. Though he died in 1971, his accomplishments are still commemorated in a variety of ways that range from his native Hunt County's annual Audie Murphy Day celebration to his induction into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and the Country Music Association of Texas. His name also appears on a VA hospital, a library room, a stretch of U.S. Highway 69 in Texas, and a San Antonio division of the Army. Murphy was born to a family of cotton growers near Kingston, TX. Boyish-looking and slender, he appeared an unlikely war hero, but while stationed in Europe with his infantry unit, Murphy was credited with killing 240 Germans, was promoted to lieutenant, and earned at least 24 medals, including a Purple Heart for a gunshot wound that shattered his hip and the coveted Congressional Medal of Honor. Following the war, Murphy worked as a clerk and a garage attendant before James Cagney invited him to his Hollywood home. Murphy stayed for 18 months and made his screen debut in Beyond Glory (1948), playing a guilt-ridden soldier. He had his first starring role in Bad Boy (1949) and was praised for his naturalistic acting style. Some critics chided him for only playing himself, but Murphy never claimed any acting ability. For audiences impressed with his war record and charmed by his charisma, Murphy playing himself was enough to sustain his busy film career for two decades. By the early '50s, Murphy was appearing in second-string Westerns. In 1953, distinguished director John Huston, whom Murphy regarded as a friend and mentor, starred him as the young soldier in his adaptation of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage (1953). He would again work with Huston in 1960s' The Unforgiven. In 1955, Murphy appeared in his signature film, To Hell and Back, a chronicle of his war experiences based on his published autobiography. This film's box-office success allowed Murphy to appear in larger-budget films through the early '60s when he once again returned to B-movies. All told, during his heyday, Murphy worked with some of the era's most prominent stars including Jimmy Stewart, Broderick Crawford, and Audrey Hepburn. But while Murphy's professional life flourished, he had to grapple with some tough situations in his personal life. In the late '60s, an Algerian oil field he'd purchased was blown up during the Seven Day War. Murphy lost around 250,000 dollars. In 1970, he was tried and acquitted for beating up and threatening to kill a man during a heated fight, the precise circumstances of which remain muddled. Despite this courtroom victory, rumors circulated that Murphy was suffering personal problems resulting from his war experiences. Murphy was once briefly married to actress Wanda Hendrix with whom he had appeared in Sierra (1950). In 1951, Murphy married Pamela Archer and they remained happily wed until he accidentally crashed his plane into a Virginia mountainside on Memorial Day 1971. Murphy was given a full military burial and was interred in Arlington Cemetery.

Trivia: The product of a large and widely scattered Florida family, dark-eyed, doll-faced actress Wanda Hendrix was fresh out of local community theatre when she made her film debut at the age of 16. Not overly talented, Hendrix exuded a raw energy and exotic demeanor which briefly made her a fascinating screen presence. Director Robert Montgomery was able to cajole a thoroughly convincing performance from Hendrix in 1947's Ride the Pink Horse, after which she settled into the sort of pedestrian leading-lady roles that any competent actress could have played. Despite flashes of excellence in such films as Captain Carey USA (1950) and The Highwayman (1951), Hendrix was soon demoted from prestige pictures to western programmers and TV anthologies. Married three times, Hendrix's first husband was mercurial actor/war hero Audie Murphy. After several years of inactivity, 52-year-old Wanda Hendrix died of pneumonia.

Trivia: After attending Charleston (Illinois) Teachers College and New York University, bearded, burly Burl Ives played pro football, then traversed the country as an itinerant handyman. His gifts as a guitarist and balladeer enabled Ives to secure radio work in the 1940s: one of his earliest series was titled, appropriately enough, The Wayfaring Stranger. A natural-born actor, Ives made his screen debut in 1946's Smoky. Throughout the rest of his career, there were two Burl Ives. The twinkly-eyed, grandfatherly Ives was the fellow who provided comedy relief in such films as Summer Magic (1963) and The Brass Bottle (1964), who starred in the easygoing culture-clash TV sitcom OK Crackerby (1965) who played the gruff-but-avuncular senior attorney on the weekly series The Bold Ones: The Lawyers (1969), and who recorded such song hits as "Itty Bitty Tear," "My Funny Way of Laughing" and that inescapable Holiday perennial, "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas." Then there was the "other" Burl Ives: the shark-eyed, intimidating, domineering patriarch who portrayed Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Ephraim Cabot in Desire Under the Elms (1959) and who won an Academy Award for his chilling portrayal of a mean-for-the-hell-of-it land baron in The Big Country (1958).

Trivia: An Ohio farm boy, Dean Jagger dropped out of school several times before attending Wabash College. He was a schoolteacher for several years before opting to study acting at Chicago's Lyceum Art Conservatory. By the time he made his first film in 1929, Jagger had worked in stock, vaudeville and radio. At first, Hollywood attempted to turn Jagger into a standard leading man, fitting the prematurely balding actor with a lavish wig and changing his name to Jeffrey Dean. It wasn't long before the studios realized that Jagger's true calling was as a character actor. One of his few starring roles after 1940 was as the title character in Brigham Young, Frontiersman--though top billing went to Tyrone Power, cast as a fictional Mormon follower. Jagger won an Academy Award for his sensitive performance in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) as one of General Gregory Peck's officers (and the film's narrator). Physically and vocally, Jagger would have been ideal for the role of Dwight D. Eisenhower, but he spent his career studiously avoiding that assignment. Having commenced his professional life as a teacher, Dean Jagger came full circle in 1964 when cast as Principal Albert Vane on the TV series Mr. Novak.

Trivia: Supporting actor Richard Rober came to films in 1947 most often playing character bits, frequently unbilled, at 20th Century-Fox. His one-and-only film starring role was as Sheriff Ben Kellogg in United Artists' The Well (1950), a low-budget but well-intentioned plea for racial tolerance. Richard Rober was 46 years old when he was killed in an automobile accident in 1952; he made his last screen appearance five years later, when producer Howard Hughes finally released his 1950 production Jet Pilot.

Trivia: Originally dismissed as little more than a pretty boy, Tony Curtis overcame a series of bad reviews and undistinguished pictures to emerge as one of the most successful actors of his era, appearing in a number of the most popular and acclaimed films of the late '50s and early '60s. Born Bernard Schwartz on June 3, 1925, in New York City, he was the son of an impoverished Hungarian-born tailor, and was a member of an infamous area street gang by the age of 11. During World War II, Curtis served in the navy, and was injured while battling in Guam. After the war, he returned to New York to pursue a career in acting, touring the Borscht circuit before starring in a Greenwich Village revival of Golden Boy. There Curtis came to the attention of Universal, who signed him to a seven-year contract. In 1948, he made his film debut, unbilled, in the classic Robert Siodmak noir Criss Cross. A series of bit roles followed, and he slowly made his way up through the studio's ranks.While 1950's Kansas Raiders was nominally headlined by Brian Donlevy, Curtis was, for many, the real draw; dark and handsome, he was hugely popular with teens and fan-magazine readers, and his haircut alone was so admired that Universal was receiving upwards of 10,000 letters a week asking for a lock of his hair. There was even a contest, "Win Tony Curtis for a week." Clearly, he was on the brink of stardom and earned top billing in his next picture, 1951's The Prince Who Was a Thief, which co-starred another up-and-comer, Piper Laurie. Despite his surging popularity, however, he still had much to learn about his craft and spent the remainder of the year training in voice, dramatics, and gymnastics. In 1952, Curtis finally returned to the screen as a boxer in Flesh and Fury. Two more pictures with Laurie, No Room for the Groom and Son of Ali Baba, followed. In 1953 Paramount borrowed Curtis to portray Houdini, which cast him opposite his wife, Janet Leigh.Despite continued -- albeit measured -- box-office success, Curtis was roundly panned by critics for his performances, a problem exacerbated by Universal's reliance on formula filmmaking. Pictures like 1954's Beachhead (a war drama), Johnny Dark (an auto-racing tale), and The Black Shield of Falworth (a medieval saga) were all by-the-numbers products. Finally, in 1956 United Artists borrowed him for the Burt Lancaster vehicle Trapeze; not only was it Curtis' first serious project, but it was also his first true commercial smash, resulting in another long-term Universal package. Still, the studio cast him in low-rent programmers like The Rawhide Years and The Midnight Story, and he was forced to fight executives to loan him out. Lancaster tapped him to co-star in 1957's The Sweet Smell of Success, and the resulting performance won Curtis the best reviews of his career. Similar kudos followed for The Vikings, co-starring Kirk Douglas, and Kings Go Forth, a war story with Frank Sinatra.In 1958, Curtis and Sidney Poitier starred in Stanley Kramer's social drama The Defiant Ones as a pair of escaped convicts -- one white, the other black, both manacled together -- who must overcome their prejudices in order to survive; their performances earned both men Academy Award nominations (the only such nod of Curtis' career), and was among the most acclaimed and profitable films of the year. He returned to Universal a major star and a much better actor; upon coming back, he first starred in a Blake Edwards comedy, The Perfect Furlough, then made the best film of his career -- 1959's Some Like It Hot, a masterful Billy Wilder comedy which cast him and Jack Lemmon as struggling musicians forced to dress in drag to flee the mob. Curtis next starred with his avowed idol, Cary Grant, in Edwards' comedy Operation Petticoat, another massive hit followed in 1960 by Who Was That Lady? with Leigh and Dean Martin.For director Stanley Kubrick, Curtis co-starred in the 1960 epic Spartacus, followed a year later by The Great Impostor. He delivered a strong performance in 1961's The Outsider, but the film was drastically edited prior to release and was a box-office disaster. After exiting the Gina Lollobrigida picture Lady L prior to production, Curtis made a brief appearance in John Huston's acclaimed The List of Adrian Messenger before appearing opposite Gregory Peck in Captain Newman, M.D. With second wife Christine Kauffman, he starred in 1964's Wild and Wonderful, which was reported to be his last film for Universal. Curtis then focused almost solely on comedy, including Goodbye Charlie, the big-budget The Great Race, and, with Jerry Lewis, Boeing Boeing. None were successful, and he found his career in dire straits; as a result, he battled long and hard to win the against-type title role in 1968's The Boston Strangler, earning good critical notices.However, Curtis returned to comedy, again with disappointing results: The 1969 Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies was the unsuccessful follow-up to the hit Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, while 1970's Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? found even fewer takers. Curtis then attempted a 1971 television series, The Persuaders, but it lasted barely a season. In 1973, he toured in the play Turtlenecks and appeared in the TV movie The Third Girl on the Left. That summer he announced his retirement from films, but was back onscreen for 1975's Lepke. Curtis also attempted another TV series, McCoy, but it too was unsuccessful. In 1976, he appeared in the all-star drama The Last Tycoon, and published a novel, Kid Cody and Julie Sparrow. In 1978, he was also a regular on the hit series Vega$. Ultimately, the decades to come were no more successful than the 1970s, and although Curtis continued to work prolifically, his projects lacked distinction. Still, he remained a well-liked Hollywood figure, and was also the proud father of actress Jamie Lee Curtis.

Trivia: The father of actors Houseley Stevenson Jr. and Onslow Stevens, Houseley Stevenson Sr. was one of the founders and principal directors of the famed Pasadena Playhouse. After a four-decade-plus stage career, Stevenson came to films in 1936. At first, he played bits, but as he moved into his sixties the size of his roles increased. The hollow-cheeked, stubble-chinned actor was especially adept at playing elderly derelicts whose dialogue usually ran along the lines of "Whatsa matter, son? Hidin' from the law?" Houseley Stevenson was at his very best in two Humphrey Bogart films: In Dark Passage (1947), he played the seedy plastic surgeon Dr. Coley, while in Knock on Any Door he was seen as the philosophical rummy "Junior."

Trivia: Trained for an acting career at various Manhattan professional children's schools, Elliot Reid was hired for the CBS radio announcer's staff while still a teenager. His work on the airwaves led to Reid's being hired by Orson Welles for the latter's 1937 modern-dress production of Julius Caesar. Reid was subsequently featured in such Broadway hits as My Sister Eileen and Ladies in Retirement. Uncomfortably cast as a two-fisted hero in his first film, the 1950 anti-Red opus The Whip Hand, Reid was seen to better advantage in comedy roles. Highlights in the actor's film career included the part of Jane Russell's erstwhile suitor in Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1954) and Fred MacMurray's snotty romantic rival in Disney's The Absent-Minded Professor (1960) and Son of Flubber (1963). In the 1960s, Elliot Reid gained a reputation as a sharp-witted political satirist on such programs as The Jack Paar Program and That Was the Week That Was, fracturing audiences with his on-target impressions of such pundits as Lyndon Johnson and Paul Harvey. Other TV work in Reid's resumé included the role of Darleen Carr's father on the weekly sitcom Miss Winslow and Son (1979). Even in the later stages of his career, Elliot Reid would occasionally return to his dramatic-radio roots in such audio series as "Theater 5" and "The CBS Radio Mystery Theater."

Trivia: Curmudgeonly American character actor Griff Barnett first began showing up in movie bit roles in 1942. Barnett's screen time increased considerably after 1946 with solid supporting roles in films like Possessed (1947), Cass Timberlane (1947) and Tap Roots (1948). He was most often seen as stern judges (Angel Face) and small-town doctors (Pinky). Griff Barnett retired in 1955, three years before his death.

Trivia: Tall, silver-maned character actor Roy Roberts began his film career as a 20th Century-Fox contractee in 1943. Nearly always cast in roles of well-tailored authority, Roberts was most effective when conveying smug villainy. As a hotel desk clerk in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), he suavely but smarmily refused to allow Jews to check into his establishment; nineteen years later, Roberts was back behind the desk and up to his old tricks, patronizingly barring a black couple from signing the register in Hotel (1966). As the forties drew to a close, Roberts figured into two of the key film noirs of the era; he was the carnival owner who opined that down-at-heels Tyrone Power had sunk so low because "he reached too high" at the end of Nightmare Alley (1947), while in 1948's He Walked By Night, Roberts enjoyed one of his few sympathetic roles as a psycho-hunting plainclothesman. And in the 3-D classic House of Wax, Roberts played the crooked business partner of Vincent Price, whose impulsive decision to burn down Price's wax museum has horrible consequences. With the role of bombastic Captain Huxley on the popular Gale Storm TV series Oh, Susanna (1956-1960), Gordon inaugurated his dignified-foil period. He later played long-suffering executive types on The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and The Lucy Show. Roy Roberts last appeared on screen as the mayor in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974).

Trivia: Born to a middle-class Irish family and educated at the Marlborough Street Training College, 19-year-old Sara Allgood joined the Irish National Theatre Society, obtaining her first speaking role in a 1903 production of W.B. Yeats' The King's Threshold. She became a member of Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 1904; within a few years she was lauded as Ireland's foremost actress. While touring Australia in 1918, she made her film bow in Just Peggy. She didn't like the experience, and it would be eleven years before she would face the cameras again, this time in the role of Anna Ondra's mother in Blackmail (1929), Alfred Hitchcock's (and the British film industry's) first talkie. One year later, Hitchcock cast Sara in the demanding title role in the cinematic adaptation of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, a role she had created on stage with the Abbey Players in 1924. After a decade of worthwhile stage assignments and forgettable film roles, Sara came to Hollywood in 1940, where she was cast by John Ford in a strong role in the Oscar-winning How Green Was My Valley (1941). This led to a long-term contract with 20th Century-Fox, which was financially satisfying but dramatically unrewarding; after years of incisive, commanding stage roles, Sara was compelled to play cliched Irish mothers and servants. Sara Allgood's final screen appearance was in Fox's Cheaper By the Dozen (1950), in which she received prominent billing--and approximately five lines of dialogue.

Trivia: Legend has it that Orson Welles saw his first theatrical production at age seven, when a touring company of Mr. Pim Passes By played in Welles' hometown of Kenosha, WI. Invited backstage, young Welles was effusively greeted by the play's leading man, Erskine Sanford, whose kind and encouraging words inspired Welles to pursue an acting career himself. Whether this story is true or not, the fact remains that, in 1936, Erskine Sanford left the Theatre Guild after a 15-year association to join Orson Welles' experimental Mercury Theatre. When Welles took the Mercury Players to Hollywood in 1940 to film Citizen Kane, Sanford was assigned the small but plum role of Herbert Carter, the sputtering, apoplectic former editor of the New York Inquirer. The actor went on to appear prominently in such Welles-directed films as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, as Mr. Bronson), Lady From Shanghai (1947, as the judge), and MacBeth (1948, as King Duncan). Outside of his Mercury Theatre activities, Erskine Sanford played featured roles in such mainstream Hollywood productions as Ministry of Fear (1943) and Angel on My Shoulder (1946) before his retirement in 1950.

Trivia: Whenever actor Ed Platt blew one of his lines in his role of "The Chief" in the TV comedy series Get Smart, star Don Adams would cry out "Is John Doucette available?" Adams was kidding, of course, but he was not alone in his high regard for the skill and versatility of the deep-voiced, granite-featured Doucette. In films on a regular basis since 1947 (he'd made his official movie debut in 1943's Two Tickets to London), Doucette was usually cast in roles calling for bad-tempered menace, but was also adept at dispensing dignity and authority. He was equally at home with the archaic dialogue of Julius Caesar (1953) and Cleopatra (1963) as he was with the 20th-century military patois of 1970's Patton, in which he played General Truscott. John Doucette's many TV credits include a season on the syndicated MacDonald Carey vehicle Lock-Up (1959), and the role of Captain Andrews on The Partners (1971), starring Doucette's old friend and admirer Don Adams.

Trivia: American actor James Arness had an unremarkable Minneapolis childhood, but his wartime experiences shattered that normality - literally. During the battle of Anzio, Arness' right leg was peppered with machine gun bullets, and when the bones were set they didn't mend properly, leaving him with a slight but permanent limp. The trauma of the experience mellowed into aimlessness after the war. Arness became a "beach bum," lived out of his car, and worked intermittently as a salesman and carpenter. Acting was treated equally lackadaisically, but by 1947 Arness had managed to break into Hollywood on the basis of his rugged good looks and his 6'6" frame. Few of his screen roles were memorable, though one has become an object of cult worship: Arness was cast as the menacingly glowing space alien, described by one character as "an intellectual carrot," in The Thing (1951). For a time it looked as though Arness would continue to flounder in supporting roles, while his younger brother, actor Peter Graves, seemed destined for stardom. John Wayne took a liking to Arness when the latter was cast in Wayne's Big Jim McLain (1953). Wayne took it upon himself to line up work for Arness, becoming one of the withdrawn young actor's few friends. In 1955, Wayne was offered the role of Matt Dillon in the TV version of the popular radio series Gunsmoke. Wayne turned it down but recommended that Arness be cast and even went so far as to introduce him to the nation's viewers in a specially filmed prologue to the first Gunsmoke episode. Truth be told, Arness wasn't any keener than Wayne to be tied down to a weekly series, and as each season ended he'd make noises indicating he planned to leave. This game went on for each of the 20 seasons that Gunsmoke was on the air, the annual result being a bigger salary for Arness, more creative control over the program (it was being produced by his own company within a few years) and a sizeable chunk of the profits and residuals. When Gunsmoke finally left the air in 1975, Arness was the only one of the original four principals (including Amanda Blake, Milburn Stone and Dennis Weaver) still appearing on the series. Arness made plans to take it easy after his two-decade Gunsmoke hitch, but was lured back to the tube for a one-shot TV movie, The Macahans (1976). This evolved into the six-hour miniseries How the West Was Won (1977) which in turn led to a single-season weekly series in 1978. All these incarnations starred Arness, back in the saddle as Zeb Macahan. The actor tried to alter his sagebrush image in a 1981 modern-day cop series, McClain's Law -- which being set in the southwest permitted Arness to ride a horse or two. It appeared, however that James Arness would always be Matt Dillon in the hearts and minds of fans, thus Arness obliged his still-faithful public with three Gunsmoke TV movies, the last one (Gunsmoke: The Last Apache) released in 1992. In between these assignments, James Arness starred in a 1988 TV-movie remake of the 1948 western film classic Red River, in which he filled the role previously played by his friend and mentor John Wayne.

Trivia: With his slight built, narrow face and pencil-thin mustache, I. Stanford Jolley did not exactly look trustworthy, and a great many of his screen roles (more than 500) were indeed to be found on the wrong side of the law. Isaac Stanford Jolley had toured as a child with his father's traveling circus and later worked in stock and vaudeville, prior to making his Broadway debut opposite Charles Trowbridge in Sweet Seventeen (1924). Radio work followed and he arrived in Hollywood in 1935. Pegged early on as a gangster or Western outlaw, Jolley graduated to playing lead henchman or the boss villain in the '40s, mostly appearing for such poverty-row companies as Monogram and PRC. Although Jolley is often mentioned as a regular member of the Republic Pictures' stock company, he was never under contract to that legendary studio and only appeared in 25 films for them between 1936 and 1954. From 1950 on, Jolley worked frequently on television and remained a busy performer until at least 1976. According to his widow, the actor, who died of emphysema at the Motion Picture Country Hospital, never earned more than 100 dollars on any given movie assignment. He was the father of art director Stan Jolley.

Trivia: A WWI veteran who later studied law at the University of Texas, tough-looking Jack Ingram began his long show business career as a minstrel player and later reportedly toured with Mae West. He began turning up playing scruffy henchmen and assorted other B-Western villains in the mid-'30s and was later the featured heavy in Columbia serials. Ingram would go on to appear in a total of 200 Westerns and approximately 50 serials in a career that later included appearances on such television programs as The Cisco Kid and The Lone Ranger. Many of his later films and almost all his television Westerns, including the Roy Rogers and Gene Autry shows, were filmed on Ingram's own 200-acre ranch on Mulholland Drive in the Santa Monica Mountains overlooking Woodland Hills, which he had purchased from Charles Chaplin in 1944 and which remains a wilderness today.

Trivia: Inaugurating her acting career in her native London, Elizabeth Risdon studied at the RADA, and later taught there. She made her Broadway bow in the 1912 production Fanny's First Play. She then returned to England, where she was voted 1915's most popular silent film star. The tiny but resilient actress spent the 1920s alternating between the New York and London stages. After a lengthy association with the Theatre Guild, Risdon settled in Hollywood in 1934. Her talkie career consisted mostly of iron-willed matriarchs, but she also played a few frivolous comedy roles; her screen credits ranged from the lofty heights of Mourning Becomes Electra to such homely divertissement as Roy Rogers Westerns. Elizabeth Risdon was married to director George Loane Tucker and actor Brandon Evans.