Trivia: Arguably the most popular -- and certainly the busiest -- movie leading man in Hollywood history, John Wayne entered the film business while working as a laborer on the Fox lot during summer vacations from U.S.C., which he attended on a football scholarship. He met and was befriended by John Ford, a young director who was beginning to make a name for himself in action films, comedies, and dramas. Wayne was cast in small roles in Ford's late-'20s films, occasionally under the name Duke Morrison. It was Ford who recommended Wayne to director Raoul Walsh for the male lead in the 1930 epic Western The Big Trail, and, although it was a failure at the box office, the movie showed Wayne's potential as a leading man. During the next nine years, be busied himself in a multitude of B-Westerns and serials -- most notably Shadow of the Eagle and The Three Mesquiteers series -- in between occasional bit parts in larger features such as Warner Bros.' Baby Face, starring Barbara Stanwyck. But it was in action roles that Wayne excelled, exuding a warm and imposing manliness onscreen to which both men and women could respond. In 1939, Ford cast Wayne as the Ringo Kid in the adventure Stagecoach, a brilliant Western of modest scale but tremendous power (and incalculable importance to the genre), and the actor finally showed what he could do. Wayne nearly stole a picture filled with Oscar-caliber performances, and his career was made. He starred in most of Ford's subsequent major films, whether Westerns (Fort Apache [1948], She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949], Rio Grande [1950], The Searchers [1956]); war pictures (They Were Expendable [1945]); or serious dramas (The Quiet Man [1952], in which Wayne also directed some of the action sequences). He also starred in numerous movies for other directors, including several extremely popular World War II thrillers (Flying Tigers [1942], Back to Bataan [1945], Fighting Seabees [1944], Sands of Iwo Jima [1949]); costume action films (Reap the Wild Wind [1942], Wake of the Red Witch [1949]); and Westerns (Red River [1948]). His box-office popularity rose steadily through the 1940s, and by the beginning of the 1950s he'd also begun producing movies through his company Wayne-Fellowes, later Batjac, in association with his sons Michael and Patrick (who also became an actor). Most of these films were extremely successful, and included such titles as Angel and the Badman (1947), Island in the Sky (1953), The High and the Mighty (1954), and Hondo (1953). The 1958 Western Rio Bravo, directed by Howard Hawks, proved so popular that it was remade by Hawks and Wayne twice, once as El Dorado and later as Rio Lobo. At the end of the 1950s, Wayne began taking on bigger films, most notably The Alamo (1960), which he produced and directed, as well as starred in. It was well received but had to be cut to sustain any box-office success (the film was restored to full length in 1992). During the early '60s, concerned over the growing liberal slant in American politics, Wayne emerged as a spokesman for conservative causes, especially support for America's role in Vietnam, which put him at odds with a new generation of journalists and film critics. Coupled with his advancing age, and a seeming tendency to overact, he became a target for liberals and leftists. However, his movies remained popular. McLintock!, which, despite well-articulated statements against racism and the mistreatment of Native Americans, and in support of environmentalism, seemed to confirm the left's worst fears, but also earned more than ten million dollars and made the list of top-grossing films of 1963-1964. Virtually all of his subsequent movies, including the pro-Vietnam War drama The Green Berets (1968), were very popular with audiences, but not with critics. Further controversy erupted with the release of The Cowboys, which outraged liberals with its seeming justification of violence as a solution to lawlessness, but it was successful enough to generate a short-lived television series. Amid all of the shouting and agonizing over his politics, Wayne won an Oscar for his role as marshal Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, a part that he later reprised in a sequel. Wayne weathered the Vietnam War, but, by then, time had become his enemy. His action films saw him working alongside increasingly younger co-stars, and the decline in popularity of the Western ended up putting him into awkward contemporary action films like McQ (1974). Following his final film, The Shootist (1976) -- possibly his best Western since The Searchers -- the news that Wayne was stricken ill with cancer (which eventually took his life in 1979) wiped the slate clean, and his support for the Panama Canal Treaty at the end of the 1970s belatedly made him a hero for the left. Wayne finished his life honored by the film community, the U.S. Congress, and the American people as had no actor before or since. He remains among the most popular actors of his generation, as evidenced by the continual rereleases of his films on home video.

Trivia: Following study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and subsequent stage and modeling experience, legendary actress Lauren Bacall gained nationwide attention by posing for a 1943 cover of Harper's Bazaar magazine. This photo prompted film director Howard Hawks to put her under personal contract, wanting to "create" a movie star from fresh, raw material.For her screen debut, Hawks cast Bacall opposite Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not (1944). The young actress was so nervous that she walked around with her chin pressed against her collarbone to keep from shaking. As a result, she had to glance upward every time she spoke, an affectation which came across as sexy and alluring, earning Bacall the nickname "The Look." She also spoke in a deep, throaty manner, effectively obscuring the fact that she was only 19-years-old. Thanks to the diligence of Hawks and his crew -- and the actress' unique delivery of such lines as "If you want anything, just whistle..." -- Bacall found herself lauded as the most sensational newcomer of 1944. She also found herself in love with Humphrey Bogart, whom she subsequently married. Bogie and Bacall co-starred in three more films, which increased the actress' popularity, but also led critics to suggest that she was incapable of carrying a picture on her own. Bacall's disappointing solo turn in Confidential Agent (1945) seemed to confirm this, but the actress was a quick study and good listener, and before long she was turning in first-rate performances in such films as Young Man With a Horn (1950) and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). Bogart's death in 1957 after a long and painful bout with cancer left Bacall personally devastated, though, in the tradition of her show-must-go-on husband, she continued to perform to the best of her ability in films such as Designing Woman (1957) and The Gift of Love (1958). In the late '60s, after Bacall's second marriage to another hard-case actor, Jason Robards Jr., she received only a handful of negligible film roles and all but dropped out of moviemaking. In 1970, Bacall made a triumphant comeback in the stage production Applause, a musical adaptation of All About Eve, in which she played grand dame Margo Channing, a role originally played by Bette Davis in the film version. Her sultry-vixen persona long in the past, Bacall spent the '70s playing variations on her worldly, resourceful Applause role, sometimes merely being decorative (Murder on the Orient Express, 1974), but most often delivering class-A performances (The Shootist, 1976). After playing the quasi-autobiographical part of a legendary, outspoken Broadway actress in 1981's The Fan, she spent the next ten years portraying Lauren Bacall -- and no one did it better. In 1993, Bacall proved once more that she was a superb actress and not merely a "professional personality" in the made-for-cable film The Portrait, in which she and her Designing Woman co-star Gregory Peck played a still-amorous elderly couple. During the filming of The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), Bacall traveled to France to accept a special César Award for her lifetime achievement in film. For her role in Mirror, which cast her as Barbra Streisand's mother, Bacall earned a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination. She continued to work on a number of projects into the next decade, including Diamonds, in which she appeared alongside Kirk Douglas, with whom she last co-starred in the 1950 romantic drama Young Man with a Horn.In the new century she worked twice with internationally respected filmmaker Lars von Trier, appearing in Dogville and Manderlay. She was in the Nicole Kidman film Birth, and appeared in the documentary Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff. Bacall won an Honorary Oscar in 2010. She died in 2014 at age 89.

Trivia: Professionally, Ron Howard has come a long way from the tousle-haired, barefoot sheriff's son who trod the byways of idyllic Mayberry to reside in the heady company of Hollywood's most elite directors. Howard's films are pure entertainment; they are well-crafted efforts, frequently technically challenging from a production standpoint, and aimed at mainstream audiences. Though some of his lesser works have been criticized for possessing formulaic scripts, Howard's films approach even hackneyed subjects in fresh ways. Though he does not characterize himself as a risk taker, he loves the challenge of exploring different genres; therefore, his filmography includes B-movie actioners, domestic comedies, fantasies, sci-fi, suspense-thrillers, historical dramas, and big-budget action films. The son of actors Rance and Jean Howard, he made his theatrical debut at age two in a Baltimore production of The Seven Year Itch. He made his screen debut at age five in the suspenseful political drama The Journey (1959). The youngster became a hot property after that and appeared in several features, including The Music Man and The Courtship of Eddie's Father (both 1962). Through this period his father was a strong ally who kept Howard from being exploited by filmmakers. In a November 1996 interview with the Detroit News, Howard describes an incident in which he was six years old and during rehearsal could not cry on cue (Howard doesn't name the production), causing the director to threaten to flog him. Other children may have been terrified, but Howard felt secure because his father was on the set and would protect him. When producer Sheldon Leonard approached Rance Howard about casting Ronny (as he was billed during childhood) as Opie, the son of widowed sheriff Andy Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968), the elder Howard stipulated that his son be allowed time off for a normal childhood. It was as the mischievous but guileless Opie that Ronny Howard became famous. During the popular show's long run, Howard occasionally appeared in other feature films. While a series' demise often signals the death of a child actor's career, particularly if that child is obviously maturing, Howard managed the transition gracefully and continued working steadily. He was cast in a new television series, The Smith Family, in 1971 and starred opposite Henry Fonda, who became one of Howard's mentors, encouraging Howard to strive for creative growth and to take periodic risks to keep himself vital. The series lasted one season, but again Howard landed on his feet, making a bigger name for himself starring as a callow youth in George Lucas' smash hit American Graffiti (1973). The film spawned Garry Marshall's long-running hit, the '50s revival sitcom Happy Days (1974). Essentially reprising his role from the film, Howard (now billed as Ron Howard) starred as all-American youth Richie Cunningham. Again, Howard also worked simultaneously in films, notably in The Shootist (1976), where he played a teen who worshipped dying gunslinger John Wayne. Though playing a teenager on the series, Howard was in his early twenties and felt it was time to follow his longtime dream of becoming a director. Producer Roger Corman, who had recently starred Howard in Eat My Dust! (1976), let Howard helm the similarly themed Grand Theft Auto (1977). Howard also co-wrote the screenplay with his father and starred in the film. While not exactly an original masterpiece, the film earned praise for its fast-paced, high-energy action scenes. After leaving Happy Days in 1980, he directed Bette Davis in a television movie, Skyward, and managed to earn the great lady's respect with his filmmaking skills. Howard had his first big hit in 1982 with the black comedy Nightshift. It was to be the first of many instances in which he would work with producer Brian Grazer, who eventually became his partner and the co-founder of Howard's production company, Imagine Films Entertainment (established in 1985), and screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who formerly wrote for Happy Days. Howard had even greater success with the Tom Hanks/Darryl Hannah vehicle Splash (1984), which launched Disney's Touchstone Pictures and became the company's most successful live-action film to date. He followed this up with sentimental favorite Cocoon (1985). He had his first misstep after hitting it big with Willow, a George Lucas-produced fantasy extravaganza that never clicked with audiences, though it has since developed a devoted cult following. During the early '90s, Howard worked on a series of big-budget films such as Backdraft (1991) and Far and Away (1992), and Apollo 13 (1995), a gripping account of a failed moon mission. Apollo 13 was a huge international hit, nominated for nine Oscars (it won for Best Sound and Best Editing), and earned Howard the coveted Director's Guild award. In 1996, Howard attempted a new genre with the violent, bloody thriller Ransom, starring Mel Gibson. While an effective suspense thriller in it's own right, Ransom didn't darken Howard's sensibilities in any permanent terms, and after a few stints as producer on both the small screen (Felicity, Sports Night and the silver screen (Inventing the Abbots (1997) and Beyond the Mat (1999)), Howard was back in the director's chair for Ed TV in 1999, but itsuffered immediate and fatal comparisons to the more popular and strikingly similar Jim Carrey vehicle, The Truman Show. Undaunted, Howard next teamed with the rubber-faced star of Truman for How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which became a box-office smash. Once again turning back to reality after the marked departure of The Grinch, Howard helmed the sensitive real-life tale of paranoid schizophrenic mathematician turned Nobel Prize winning genius John Forbes Nash Jr. in A Beautiful Mind (2001). With Russel Crowe essaying the role of Nash and Jennifer Connelly as his faithful and enduring wife, the film gained generally positive reception upon release, and only seemed to cement Howard's reputation as one of the most versatile and gifted director's of his generation as the film took the Best Picture award at both the that year's Golden Globes and Oscars. Academy Award night proved to be an even bigger night for Howard as the film also took home awards for Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and, of course, Best Director. Howard followed up his Oscar wins with the dark Western drama The Missing starring Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett. Unfortunately, neither critics or audiences were too fond of the over-long film. Lucky for Howard, his next project would see him re-team with A Beautiful Mind's Russell Crowe. The Depression-era boxing film Cinderella Man starred Crowe as real-life boxer Jim Braddock and was released in 2005 to positive reviews and Oscar-buzz. Next, he helmed the adaptation of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, casting his old Splash leading man Tim Hanks in the lead. The film was as big a worldwide success as the book that inspired it. Howard followed the massive success with an adaptation of Peter Morgan's hit play Frost/Nixon. The film captured five Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Editing, as well as a nod for Howard's direction.As the 2000's continued to unfold, Howard would remain an extremely active filmmaker, helming movies like The Dilemma.

Trivia: James Stewart was the movies' quintessential Everyman, a uniquely all-American performer who parlayed his easygoing persona into one of the most successful and enduring careers in film history. On paper, he was anything but the typical Hollywood star: Gawky and tentative, with a pronounced stammer and a folksy "aw-shucks" charm, he lacked the dashing sophistication and swashbuckling heroism endemic among the other major actors of the era. Yet it's precisely the absence of affectation which made Stewart so popular; while so many other great stars seemed remote and larger than life, he never lost touch with his humanity, projecting an uncommon sense of goodness and decency which made him immensely likable and endearing to successive generations of moviegoers.Born May 20, 1908, in Indiana, PA, Stewart began performing magic as a child. While studying civil engineering at Princeton University, he befriended Joshua Logan, who then headed a summer stock company, and appeared in several of his productions. After graduation, Stewart joined Logan's University Players, a troupe whose membership also included Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. He and Fonda traveled to New York City in 1932, where they began winning small roles in Broadway productions including Carrie Nation, Yellow Jack, and Page Miss Glory. On the recommendation of Hedda Hopper, MGM scheduled a screen test, and soon Stewart was signed to a long-term contract. He first appeared onscreen in a bit role in the 1935 Spencer Tracy vehicle The Murder Man, followed by another small performance the next year in Rose Marie.Stewart's first prominent role came courtesy of Sullavan, who requested he play her husband in the 1936 melodrama Next Time We Love. Speed, one of six other films he made that same year, was his first lead role. His next major performance cast him as Eleanor Powell's paramour in the musical Born to Dance, after which he accepted a supporting turn in After the Thin Man. For 1938's classic You Can't Take It With You, Stewart teamed for the first time with Frank Capra, the director who guided him during many of his most memorable performances. They reunited a year later for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart's breakthrough picture; a hugely popular modern morality play set against the backdrop of the Washington political system, it cemented the all-American persona which made him so adored by fans, earning a New York Film Critics' Best Actor award as well as his first Oscar nomination.Stewart then embarked on a string of commercial and critical successes which elevated him to the status of superstar; the first was the idiosyncratic 1939 Western Destry Rides Again, followed by the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner. After The Mortal Storm, he starred opposite Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in George Cukor's sublime The Philadelphia Story, a performance which earned him the Best Actor Oscar. However, Stewart soon entered duty in World War II, serving as a bomber pilot and flying 20 missions over Germany. He was highly decorated for his courage, and did not fully retire from the service until 1968, by which time he was an Air Force Brigadier General, the highest-ranking entertainer in the U.S. military. Stewart's combat experiences left him a changed man; where during the prewar era he often played shy, tentative characters, he returned to films with a new intensity. While remaining as genial and likable as ever, he began to explore new, more complex facets of his acting abilities, accepting roles in darker and more thought-provoking films. The first was Capra's 1946 perennial It's a Wonderful Life, which cast Stewart as a suicidal banker who learns the true value of life. Through years of TV reruns, the film became a staple of Christmastime viewing, and remains arguably Stewart's best-known and most-beloved performance. However, it was not a hit upon its original theatrical release, nor was the follow-up Magic Town -- audiences clearly wanted the escapist fare of Hollywood's prewar era, not the more pensive material so many other actors and filmmakers as well as Stewart wanted to explore in the wake of battle. The 1948 thriller Call Northside 777 was a concession to audience demands, and fans responded by making the film a considerable hit. Regardless, Stewart next teamed for the first time with Alfred Hitchcock in Rope, accepting a supporting role in a tale based on the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case. His next few pictures failed to generate much notice, but in 1950, Stewart starred in a pair of Westerns, Anthony Mann's Winchester 73 and Delmer Daves' Broken Arrow. Both were hugely successful, and after completing an Oscar-nominated turn as a drunk in the comedy Harvey and appearing in Cecil B. De Mille's Academy Award-winning The Greatest Show on Earth, he made another Western, 1952's Bend of the River, the first in a decade of many similar genre pieces.Stewart spent the 1950s primarily in the employ of Universal, cutting one of the first percentage-basis contracts in Hollywood -- a major breakthrough soon to be followed by virtually every other motion-picture star. He often worked with director Mann, who guided him to hits including The Naked Spur, Thunder Bay, The Man From Laramie, and The Far Country. For Hitchcock, Stewart starred in 1954's masterful Rear Window, appearing against type as a crippled photographer obsessively peeking in on the lives of his neighbors. More than perhaps any other director, Hitchcock challenged the very assumptions of the Stewart persona by casting him in roles which questioned his character's morality, even his sanity. They reunited twice more, in 1956's The Man Who Knew Too Much and 1958's brilliant Vertigo, and together both director and star rose to the occasion by delivering some of the best work of their respective careers. Apart from Mann and Hitchcock, Stewart also worked with the likes of Billy Wilder (1957's Charles Lindbergh biopic The Spirit of St. Louis) and Otto Preminger (1959's provocative courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder, which earned him yet another Best Actor bid). Under John Ford, Stewart starred in 1961's Two Rode Together and the following year's excellent The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The 1962 comedy Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation was also a hit, and Stewart spent the remainder of the decade alternating between Westerns and family comedies. By the early '70s, he announced his semi-retirement from movies, but still occasionally resurfaced in pictures like the 1976 John Wayne vehicle The Shootist and 1978's The Big Sleep. By the 1980s, Stewart's acting had become even more limited, and he spent much of his final years writing poetry; he died July 2, 1997.

Trivia: Rough-hewn American leading man Richard Boone was thrust into the cold cruel world when he was expelled from Stanford University, for a minor infraction. He worked as a oil-field laborer, boxer, painter and free-lance writer before settling upon acting as a profession. After serving in World War II, Boone used his GI Bill to finance his theatrical training at the Actors' Studio, making his belated Broadway debut at age 31, playing Jason in Judith Anderson's production of Medea. Signed to a 20th Century-Fox contract in 1951, Boone was given good billing in his first feature, Halls of Montezuma; among his Fox assignments was the brief but telling role of Pontius Pilate in The Robe (1953). Boone launched the TV-star phase of his career in the weekly semi-anthology Medic, playing Dr. Konrad Steiner. From 1957 through 1963, Boone portrayed Paladin, erudite western soldier of fortune, on the popular western series Have Gun, Will Travel. He directed several episodes of this series. Boone tackled a daring TV assignment in 1963, when in collaboration with playwright Clifford Odets, he appeared in the TV anthology series The Richard Boone Show. Unique among filmed dramatic programs, Boone's series featured a cast of eleven regulars (including Harry Morgan, Robert Blake, Jeanette Nolan, Bethel Leslie and Boone himself), who appeared in repertory, essaying different parts of varying sizes each week. The Richard Boone Show failed to catch on, and Boone went back to films. In 1972 he starred in another western series, this one produced by his old friend Jack Webb: Hec Ramsey, the saga of an old-fashioned sheriff coping with an increasingly industrialized West. In the last year of his life, Boone was appointed Florida's cultural ambassador. Richard Boone died at age 65 of throat cancer.

Trivia: American actor Hugh O'Brian accrued his interest in acting while dancing with movie starlets at the Hollywood Canteen during his wartime Marine days. O'Brian attended the University of Cincinnati briefly, and later supported himself selling menswear door-to-door. He made his first film, Never Fear, in 1950, working but sporadically during the next five years; what few acting parts he received were on the basis of his broad shoulders and six-foot height. In one film, Fireman Save My Child (1954), O'Brian was cast because he and costar Buddy Hackett physically matched the previously filmed long shots of Fireman's original stars, Abbott and Costello. Answering a cattle-call tryout for the new ABC TV western Wyatt Earp in 1955, O'Brian was almost instantly chosen for the leading role by author Stuart Lake, who'd known the real Wyatt and had been his biographer for many years (reportedly Earp's widow also okayed O'Brien after a single glance). O'Brian became a major TV star thanks to Wyatt Earp, which ran for 249 episodes until 1961. The series was not only tough on the actor but on his fans; reportedly there was a sharp increase in gun accidents during Wyatt Earp's run, due to young would-be Earps who were trying to emulate Wyatt's fast draw (this despite the fact that the TV Earp, like the real one, used his firearms only when absolutely necessary). Like most western TV stars, O'Brian swore he was through with shoot-em-ups when Earp ceased production, and throughout the '60s he worked in almost every type of film and theatrical genre but westerns. He showed considerable skill in the realm of musical comedy, and became a top draw in the summer-stock and dinner theatre circuit. In 1972, O'Brian starred in the computer-happy secret-agent TV series Search, which lasted only a single season. As he became the focus of hero worship from grown-up Baby Boomers, O'Brian relaxed his resistance toward Wyatt Earp and began showing up on live and televised western retrospectives. The actor reprised the Earp role in two 1989 episodes of the latter-day TV western Paradise, opposite Gene Barry in his old TV role of Bat Masterson. He was Earp again in the 1991 TV movie The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw, in which he managed to shine in the company of several other cowboy-show veterans (including Barry, again) and was permitted to walk into the sunset as an offscreen chorus warbled the Wyatt Earp theme music! Hugh O'Brian's most recent turn at Ol' Wyatt was in a hastily assembled CBS movie mostly comprised of clips from the old Earp series, and released to capitalize on Kevin Costner's big-budget Wyatt Earp film of 1994. O'Brian died in 2016, at age 91.

Trivia: A character actor beloved particularly for playing villains, Bill McKinney was born in Chattanooga, TN, in 1931. After spending some time in Los Angeles while on leave in the Navy, McKinney decided to settle there following his discharge in order to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. He studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and Lee Strausberg's Actors Studio while paying the bills as a high-school teacher before he began landing TV roles on shows like The Monkees and I Dream of Jeannie. In 1972, McKinney was cast as a sadistic mountain man in the thriller Deliverance alongside Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight. His visage was soon synonymous with ominousness and violence, leading to a slew of roles as baddies in a wide variety of films over the coming years, like Cleopatra Jones, The Shootist, First Blood, and The Parallax View. McKinney also began collaborating with Clint Eastwood on a series of films, including The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Every Which Way but Loose, Any Which Way You Can, and Pink Cadillac. By the 2000s, the actor, now in his seventies, was still going strong. He appeared in such films as 2007's Lucky You, 2008's Pride and Glory, and 2010's How Do You Know before passing away in December 2011 at age 80.

Trivia: One of the most prolific actors in television history -- with starring roles in 11 different television series under his belt -- Harry Morgan is most closely identified with his portrayal of Colonel Sherman Potter on M*A*S*H (1975-83). But his credits go back to the 1930s, embracing theater and film as well as the small screen. Born Harry Bratsberg in Detroit, Michigan, in 1915, he made his Broadway debut with the Group Theatre in 1937 as Pepper White in the original production of Golden Boy, alongside Luther Adler, Phoebe Brand, Howard Da Silva, Lee J. Cobb, Morris Carnovsky, Frances Farmer, Elia Kazan, John Garfield, Martin Ritt, and Roman Bohnen. His subsequence stage appearances between 1939 and 1941 comprised a string of failures -- most notably Clifford Odets' Night Music, directed by Harold Clurman; and Robert Ardrey's Thunder Rock, directed by Elia Kazan -- before he turned to film work. Changing his name to Henry Morgan, he appeared in small roles in The Shores of Tripoli, The Loves of Edgar Allen Poe, and Orchestra Wives, all from 1942. Over the next two years, he essayed supporting roles in everything from war movies to Westerns, where he showed an ability to dominate the screen with his voice and his eyes. Speaking softly, Morgan could quietly command a scene, even working alongside Henry Fonda in the most important of those early pictures, The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). Over the years following World War II, Morgan played ever-larger roles marked by their deceptive intensity. And even when he couldn't use his voice in a role, such as that of the mute and sinister Bill Womack in The Big Clock (1948), he was still able to make his presence felt in every one of his scenes with his eyes and his body movements. He was in a lot of important pictures during this period, including major studio productions such as All My Sons (1948), Down to the Sea in Ships (1949), and Madame Bovary (1949). He also appeared in independent films, most notably The Well (1951) and High Noon (1952). One of the more important of those roles was his portrayal of a professional killer in Appointment With Danger (1951), in which he worked alongside fellow actor Jack Webb for the first time. Morgan also passed through the stock company of director Anthony Mann, working in a brace of notable outdoor pictures across the 1950s. It was during the mid-1950s, as he began making regular appearances on television, that he was obliged to change his professional name to Harry Morgan (and, sometimes, Henry "Harry" Morgan), owing to confusion with another performer named Henry Morgan, who had already established himself on the small screen and done some movie acting as well. And it was at this time that Morgan, now billed as Harry Morgan, got his first successful television series, December Bride, which ran for five seasons and yielded a spin-off, Pete and Gladys. Morgan continued to appear in movies, increasingly in wry, comedic roles, most notably Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), but it was the small screen where his activity was concentrated throughout the 1960s.In 1966, Jack Webb, who had become an actor, director, and producer over the previous 15 years, decided to revive the series Dragnet and brought Morgan aboard to play the partner of Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday. As Officer Bill Gannon, Morgan provided a wonderful foil for the deadpan, no-nonsense Friday, emphasizing the natural flair for comic eccentricity that Morgan had shown across the previous 25 years. The series ran for four seasons, and Morgan reprised the role in the 1987 Dragnet feature film. He remained a busy actor going into the 1970s, when true stardom beckoned unexpectedly. In 1974, word got out that McLean Stevenson was planning on leaving the successful series M*A*S*H, and the producers were in the market for a replacement in the role of the military hospital's commanding officer. Morgan did a one-shot appearance as a comically deranged commanding general and earned the spot as Stevenson's replacement. Morgan worked periodically in the two decades following the series' cancellation in 1983, before retiring after 1999. He died in 2011 at age 96.

Trivia: Though best known to modern filmgoers as a horror star, cadaverous John Carradine was, in his prime, one of the most versatile character actors on the silver screen. The son of a journalist father and physician mother, Carradine was given an expensive education in Philadelphia and New York. Upon graduating from the Graphic Arts School, he intended to make his living as a painter and sculptor, but in 1923 he was sidetracked into acting. Working for a series of low-paying stock companies throughout the 1920s, he made ends meet as a quick-sketch portrait painter and scenic designer. He came to Hollywood in 1930, where his extensive talents and eccentric behavior almost immediately brought him to the attention of casting directors. He played a dizzying variety of distinctive bit parts -- a huntsman in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a crowd agitator in Les Miserables (1935) -- before he was signed to a 20th Century Fox contract in 1936. His first major role was the sadistic prison guard in John Ford's Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), which launched a long and fruitful association with Ford, culminating in such memorable screen characterizations as the gentleman gambler in Stagecoach (1939) and Preacher Casy ("I lost the callin'!") in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Usually typecast as a villain, Carradine occasionally surprised his followers with non-villainous roles like the philosophical cab driver in Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) and Abraham Lincoln in Of Human Hearts (1938). Throughout his Hollywood years, Carradine's first love remained the theater; to fund his various stage projects (which included his own Shakespearean troupe), he had no qualms about accepting film work in the lowest of low-budget productions. Ironically, it was in one of these Poverty Row cheapies, PRC's Bluebeard (1944), that the actor delivered what many consider his finest performance. Though he occasionally appeared in an A-picture in the 1950s and 1960s (The Ten Commandments, Cheyenne Autumn), Carradine was pretty much consigned to cheapies during those decades, including such horror epics as The Black Sleep (1956), The Unearthly (1957), and the notorious Billy the Kid Meets Dracula (1966). He also appeared in innumerable television programs, among them Twilight Zone, The Munsters, Thriller, and The Red Skelton Show, and from 1962 to 1964 enjoyed a long Broadway run as courtesan-procurer Lycus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Though painfully crippled by arthritis in his last years, Carradine never stopped working, showing up in films ranging from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) to Peggy Sue Got Married (1984). Married four times, John Carradine was the father of actors David, Keith, Robert, and Bruce Carradine.

Trivia: Born Dawn Bethel, North began dancing professionally at age 10 and, during her teens, modeled and danced in clubs and for film loops; meanwhile, she got married at 15 and soon had a child. She got bit roles in a couple of films, and in 1953 gained Hollywood's attention with a wild dance performance in the Broadway musical Hazel Flagg. North reprised her role in the play's screen version, Living It Up (1954), with Martin and Lewis. Soon thereafter she was signed to a film contract by Fox, which tried to make her into a '50s-style platinum blond "sexpot" and potential replacement for Marilyn Monroe; the studio mounted a big publicity campaign and starred her in several light productions. She proved herself to be a skilled comedian and dancer and a reasonably good actress. However, within a few years other actresses usurped her "dumb blond" roles, and after 1958 she disappeared from the screen for almost a decade. She went on to perform in stock, on the road, and on TV. Gradually, she developed a reputation as a serious actress, an unprecedented transformation of performing personas for an actress of her generation. In the late '60s she began appearing regularly in films in character roles, and she sustained a busy screen and TV career through the '90s.

Trivia: Tall, expressive leading man Rick Lenz has been in films since playing the peripheral role of Igor Sullivan in 1969's Cactus Flower. Lenz has steadfastly avoided pigeonholing as a "type," playing gunslingers, victims, villains, patient husbands, insensitive fools, intellectuals, and even a wimpy murder-mystery fanatic (in the 1991 TV remake of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt). The closest Lenz came to remaining in any one characterization for any length of time was between 1972 and 1974. It was during this period that Rick Lenz played Oliver B. Stamp, a big-city criminologist operating in the Wild West, in the Richard Boone TV series Hec Ramsey.

Trivia: African- American entertainer Scatman Crothers supported himself as a drummer throughout his high-school years. He formed a popular dance band, playing successful engagements even in the whitest of white communities, regaling audiences with his free-form "scat singing." In the formative years of television, Crothers became the first black performer to host a TV musical program in Los Angeles. He made his movie debut in the 1951 minstrel-show pastiche Yes Sir, Mr. Bones (1951). The best of his 1950s film appearances was as Dan Dailey's medicine-show partner in Meet Me at the Fair (1952). For the next three decades, Crother's movie roles varied in size; he was seen to best advantage as the concerned handyman in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Adult TV fans will remember Scatman Crothers as Louie the garbageman on the 1970s sitcom Chico and the Man; Crothers also did voice-over work in the title role of the Saturday morning cartoon series Hong Kong Phooey.

Trivia: Gregg Palmer started out as a radio disc jockey, billed under his given name of Palmer Lee. He launched his film career in 1950, usually appearing in Westerns and crime melodramas. During the 1950s, he could most often be seen in such inexpensive sci-fi fare as A Creature Walks Among Us (1956) and Zombies of Moro Tau. Before his retirement in 1983, Gregg Palmer logged in a great many TV credits, including a 13-week stint as a Chicago gunman named Harry in Run Buddy Run (1966).

Trivia: A Hollywood child actor from 1927, Dick Winslow showed up in dozen of early talkies as page boys, messenger boys, and office boys. One of Winslow's few "named" roles was Joe Harper in the 1930 version of Tom Sawyer. Adept at several musical instruments, Winslow graced many a film of the 1940s and 1950s, playing everything from picnic accordion players to cocktail pianists. The apotheosis of this stage of Winslow's career was his one-man band in 1965's Do Not Disturb. A veteran of 60 years in the business, Dick Winslow made his last screen appearance as "the Old Man" in 1988's Fatal Judgment.

Trivia: Solidly built, boyishly handsome American leading-man Christopher George was the son of Greek immigrants. Weaned on stories of the legendary Greek heroes, Christopher and his brother Nick (later a prominent fashion photographer) both quit high school to join the Marines. Completing his education after his tour of duty, George acted in numerous TV commercials, winning a New York Film Festival award for his efforts. After appearing in plays like A Streetcar Named Desire and films like Howard Hawks' El Dorado (1965), George became a TV star by virtue of the weekly wartime adventure series The Rat Patrol ('66-'68). He later starred in the science-fiction series The Immortal (70-71) then returned to filmmaking. In his last years, George was a frequent guest on the religious talk-show circuit. Christopher George died of a heart attack at the age of 54; he was survived by his wife and frequent co-star, actress Lynda Day George.

Trivia: Made her film debut at age 8 in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie. Studied ballet, tap, jazz and singing from an early age and majored in piano in college. Developed her own line of hair-care products. Longtime fan of I Love Lucy and founding board member of the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Lucy's hometown of Jamestown, NY. Was a cofounder of the Save the Earth foundation, which creates awareness of environmental issues. Won the Soap Opera Digest award for Outstanding Lead Actress in 2001. Celebrated 30 years as Nikki Newman on The Young and the Restless in 2009.

Trivia: The son of Hollywood cinematographer Robert Surtees, Bruce Surtees himself began setting up angles and focus in the late 1960s. Surtees first gained widespread attention for his camerawork on the Clint Eastwood-Don Siegel collaborations The Beguiled (1971) and Dirty Harry (1971). When Eastwood launched his own directorial career, he took Surtees with him, and the results included such visual feasts as Play Misty For Me (1971), High Plains Drifter (1973), The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976) and Pale Rider (1985). Surtees' moody, noirish stylings, best exemplified by his Oscar-nominated black-and-white photography for Bob Fosse's Lenny, earned him the nickname "The Prince of Darkness." Not that Surtees was confined to any one genre; the same Surtees responsible for such shadow-drenched exercises as Escape from Alcatraz and Tightrope also contributed the vibrant colorations of such lighter fare as Movie Movie (1979), Risky Business (1982) and Back to the Death (1987). Surtees died at age 74 in February 2012.

Trivia: No relation to Leonard Bernstein, American film composer Elmer Bernstein was a graduate of the prestigious Juilliard School of Music. He dabbled in all aspects of the arts (including dance) before devoting himself to composing; his first major stint was for United Nations radio. In the early '50s, Bernstein was willing to take any job available just to establish himself -- which possibly explains why his name is on the credits of that "golden turkey" Robot Monster. The composer's big breakthrough came with his progressive jazz score for The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), after which he switched artistic gears with his Wagnerian orchestrations for DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). Bernstein's pulsating score for The Magnificent Seven (1960) has since become a classic -- so much so that Bernstein is often mistakenly credited for Jerome Moross' similar theme music for The Big Country (1958). As film tastes changed in the late '60s and early '70s, Bernstein's over-arranged compositions seemed a bit anachronistic, a fact that the composer himself apparently realized, as witnessed by his semi-satirical score for National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). Bernstein remained active throughout the '90s, rearranging Bernard Herrmann's original score for the 1991 remake of Cape Fear, underlining the innate romanticism of such films as Rambling Rose (1991), and earning Oscar nominations for his work on The Age of Innocence (1993) and Far From Heaven (2002). In 1967, Bernstein won his only Academy Award for Thoroughly Modern Millie, for which he wrote only the background music and none of the individual songs.

Trivia: Mike Frankovich was the son of comedian Joe E. Brown (who encouraged the boy's activities in the field of athletics). Frankovich's preteen sports prowess brought him to the attention of Douglas Fairbanks Sr., who arranged for the boy to appear in Rosita, a 1923 film starring Fairbanks' wife Mary Pickford. After distinguishing himself athletically at UCLA, Frankovich worked as a radio producer, announcer and sportscaster. He returned to films in 1938 as a screenwriter then from 1940 to 1941 acted in a handful of films, nearly always cast as a radio commentator. Following World War II service, Frankovich made a second return to Hollywood in a production capacity. He produced several films abroad before being put in charge of Columbia Pictures' British division. He was made supervisor of Columbia's international productions in 1962, and the following year was appointed vice president in charge of the studio's entire production output. In 1968 he went "independent" again, producing such films as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1968), Cactus Flower (1969) and Butterflies are Free (1972). He was married to actress Binnie Barnes, who made her final screen appearance in her husband's production of Cactus Flower (1969). Though in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, Mike Frankovich put in an appearance at the 1984 Oscar ceremony to accept the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, valiantly delivering a halting but heartfelt "thank you" speech.

Trivia: A former Mousketeer, Johnny Crawford is best remembered for playing young Mark McCain on The Rifleman (1958-1963). His career slowed after he reached adulthood when he was relegated to supporting roles.

Trivia: Leo Gordon cut one of the toughest, meanest, and most memorable figures on the screen of any character actor of his generation -- and he came by some of that tough-guy image naturally, having done time in prison for armed robbery. At 6 feet 2 inches tall, and with muscles to match, Gordon was an implicitly imposing screen presence, and most often played villains, although when he did play someone on the side of the angels he was equally memorable. Early in his adult life, Gordon did, indeed, serve a term at San Quentin for armed robbery; but after his release he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and was a working actor by the early 1950's. His first credited screen appearance (as Leo V. Gordon) was on television, in the Hallmark Hall of Fame production of "The Blue And White Lamp", with Frank Albertson and Earl Rowe, in 1952. His early feature film appearances included roles in China Venture (1953) and Gun Fury (1953), the latter marking the start of his long association with westerns, which was solidified with his villainous portrayal in the John Wayne vehicle Hondo (1953). It was in Don Siegel's Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), which was shot at San Quentin, that a lot of mainstream filmgoers discovered precisely how fearsome Gordon could be, in the role of "Crazy Mike Carnie." One of the most intimidating members of a cast that was overflowing with tough guys (and which used real cons as extras), Gordon's career was made after that. Movie work just exploded for the actor, and he was in dozens of pictures a year over the next few years, as well as working in a lot of better television shows, and he also earned a regular spot in the series Circus Boy, as Hank Miller. More typical, however, was his work in the second episode of the western series Bonanza, "Death on Sun Mountain", in which he played a murderous profiteer in Virginia City's boomtown days. Once in a while, directors triped to tap other sides of his screen persona, as in the western Black Patch (1957). And at the start of the next decade, Gordon got one of his rare (and best) non-villain parts in a movie when Roger Corman cast him in The Intruder (1962), in the role of Sam Griffin, an onlooker who takes it upon himself to break up a race riot in a small southern town torn by court-ordered school integration. But a year later, he was back in his usual villain mold -- and as good as ever at it -- in McLintock!; in one of the most famous scenes of his career, he played the angry homesteader whose attempt to lynch a Native American leads to a head-to-head battle with John Wayne, bringing about an extended fight featuring the whole cast in a huge mud-pit. Gordon was still very busy as an actor and sometime writer well into the 1980's and early 1990's. He played General Omar Bradley in the mini-series War And Remembrance, and made his final screen appearance as Wyatt Earp in the made-for-television vehicle The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Hollywood Follies. He passed away in 2000 of natural causes.

Trivia: The famous offspring of actors Ozzie Nelson and Harriet Hilliard Nelson, Rick Nelson (born Eric Hilliard Nelson) began performing on his parents' radio show when he was only four. When Ozzie and Harriet moved to television in 1952, Rick went with them and while on the show, grew up to become a teen idol, loved not only as an actor but also as a rock & roll singer who racked up hits with such singles as "Hello Mary Lou," "Travelin' Man," and "Garden Party" (his biggest and last big hit). Nelson made his feature-film debut in A Story of Three Loves. He earned critical acclaim as a cocky young gunfighter in Rio Bravo (1959) starring opposite John Wayne and Dean Martin. He continued appearing in films, in concert, and on television through the early '80s. Nelson, the father of actress Tracy Nelson and twin pop stars Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, died in a plane crash along with his fiancée and his band on New Year's Eve 1985.

Trivia: American actor Henry Slate was an Army private when he made his first film appearance in 1944, repeating his stage performance as one of the Andrews Sisters in the all-serviceman drama Winged Victory. He went on to play supporting roles in a number of major Hollywood productions, often cast as military officers and working stiffs. From 1960 to 1961, he was seen as the colorfully yclept Bulldog Lovey on TV's Adventures in Paradise. Henry Slate spent the latter stages of his screen career playing character bits in a steady stream of Disney pictures.