Trivia: In the first ten years of his life, Raymond Burr moved from town to town with his mother, a single parent who supported her little family by playing the organ in movie houses and churches. An unusually large child, he was able to land odd jobs that would normally go to adults. He worked as a ranch hand, a traveling tinted-photograph salesman, a Forest service fire guard, and a property agent in China, where his mother had briefly resettled. At 19, he made the acquaintance of film director Anatole Litvak, who arranged for Burr to get a job at a Toronto summer-stock theater. This led to a stint with a touring English rep company; one of his co-workers, Annette Sutherland, became his first wife. After a brief stint as a nightclub singer in Paris, Burr studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and took adult education courses at Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Chunking. His first New York theatrical break was in the 1943 play Duke in Darkness. That same year, his wife Sutherland was killed in the same plane crash that took the life of actor Leslie Howard. Distraught after the death of his wife, Burr joined the Navy, served two years, then returned to America in the company of his four-year-old son, Michael Evan Burr (Michael would die of leukemia in 1953). Told by Hollywood agents that he was overweight for movies, the 340-pound Burr spent a torturous six months living on 750 calories per day. Emerging at a trim 210 pounds, he landed his first film role, an unbilled bit as Claudette Colbert's dancing partner in Without Reservations (1946). It was in San Quentin (1946), his next film, that Burr found his true metier, as a brooding villain. He spent the next ten years specializing in heavies, menacing everyone from the Marx Brothers (1949's Love Happy) to Clark Gable (1950's Key to the City) to Montgomery Clift (1951's A Place in the Sun) to Natalie Wood (1954's A Cry in the Night). His most celebrated assignments during this period included the role of melancholy wife murderer Lars Thorwald in Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and reporter Steve Martin in the English-language scenes of the Japanese monster rally Godzilla (1956), a characterization he'd repeat three decades later in Godzilla 1985. While he worked steadily on radio and television, Burr seemed a poor prospect for series stardom, especially after being rejected for the role of Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke on the grounds that his voice was too big. In 1957, he was tested for the role of district attorney Hamilton Burger in the upcoming TV series Perry Mason. Tired of playing unpleasant secondary roles, Burr agreed to read for Burger only if he was also given a shot at the leading character. Producer Gail Patrick Jackson, who'd been courting such big names as William Holden, Fred MacMurray, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr., agreed to humor Burr by permitting him to test for both Burger and Perry Mason. Upon viewing Burr's test for the latter role, Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner jumped up, pointed at the screen, and cried "That's him!" Burr was cast as Mason on the spot, remaining with the role until the series' cancellation in 1966 and winning three Emmies along the way. Though famous for his intense powers of concentration during working hours -- he didn't simply play Perry Mason, he immersed himself in the role -- Burr nonetheless found time to indulge in endless on-set practical jokes, many of these directed at his co-star and beloved friend, actress Barbara Hale. Less than a year after Mason's demise, Burr was back at work as the wheelchair-bound protagonist of the weekly detective series Ironside, which ran from 1967 to 1975. His later projects included the short-lived TVer Kingston Confidential (1976), a sparkling cameo in Airplane 2: The Sequel (1982), and 26 two-hour Perry Mason specials, lensed between 1986 and 1993. Burr was one of the most liked and highly respected men in Hollywood. Fiercely devoted to his friends and co-workers, Burr would threaten to walk off the set whenever one of his associates was treated in a less than chivalrous manner by the producers or the network. Burr also devoted innumerable hours to charitable and humanitarian works, including his personally financed one-man tours of Korean and Vietnamese army bases, his support of two dozen foster children, and his generous financial contributions to the population of the 4,000-acre Fiji island of Naitauba, which he partly owned. Despite his unbounded generosity and genuine love of people, Burr was an intensely private person. After his divorce from his second wife and the death from cancer of his third, Burr remained a bachelor from 1955 until his death. Stricken by kidney cancer late in 1992, he insisted upon maintaining his usual hectic pace, filming one last Mason TV movie and taking an extended trip to Europe. In his last weeks, Burr refused to see anyone but his closest friends, throwing "farewell" parties to keep their spirits up. Forty-eight hours after telling his longtime friend and business partner Robert Benevides, "If I lie down, I'll die," 76-year-old Raymond Burr did just that -- dying as he'd lived, on his own terms.

Trivia: The son of legendary Broadway actor DeWolfe Hopper and movie actress Hedda Hopper, William Hopper made his film debut as an infant in one of his father's films. The popular consensus is that the younger Hopper was given his first talking-picture break because of his mother's reputation as the most feared of the Hollywood gossips. Not so: Hopper was signed to his first Warner Bros. contract in 1937, a year or so before Hedda had established herself as the queen of the dirt-dishers. At first billing himself as DeWolfe Hopper Jr., Hopper languished in bit parts and walk-ons for several years. He wasn't able to graduate to better roles until the 1950s, by which time he was calling himself William Hopper. After a largely undistinguished film career (notable exceptions to his usual humdrum assignments were his roles in 20 Million Miles to Earth [1957] and The Bad Seed [1956]) Hopper finally gained fame -- and on his own merits -- as private detective Paul Drake on the enormously popular Perry Mason television series, which began its eight-season run in 1957. In a bizarre coincidence, Perry Mason left the air in 1966, the same year that William Hopper's mother Hedda passed away.

Trivia: Described bluntly as "yeccch" in a 1968 book on movie villains, porcine Dan Seymour has certainly played more than his share of slimy bad guys. Seymour started out as a nightclub comedian, then decided to give movies a try. He was almost immediately cast in heavy roles due to his girth and sinister features. Seymour's career has in many ways been inextricably linked with the 1942 classic Casablanca. He played the small role of Abdul the doorman in that film, went on to a larger part in Warners' Casablanca clone To Have and Have Not (1944), graduated to chief of police in the Marx Brothers spoof A Night in Casablanca (1946), and, coming full circle, was cast in the old Sidney Greenstreet role of Ferrari in Warners' weekly TV series version of Casablanca in 1955. Dan Seymour continued to play small roles in films like The Way We Were into the 1970s, and was frequently seen on TV comedy series of the same era, usually cast as a self-indulgent Middle Eastern potentate.

Trivia: Dawn Richard enjoyed a brief but memorable screen career during the 1950s, despite being limited to mostly supporting roles and guest spots on television. Though she was never a star, she ended up in some of the most visible publicity materials associated with an iconic B-horror movie of the period. Born Margaret Dawn Richard in Los Angeles in 1936, she made her screen debut in 1956, in Grace Kelly's final film, The Swan, in an uncredited role. She was similarly uncredited in her next movie, The Ten Commandments (1956); for that movie, however, producer/director Cecil B. DeMille moved her out of complete anonymity to portray the young woman -- the daughter of the pharaoh -- who finds the baby Moses in the bullrushes. Episodes of Father Knows Best and Cheyenne followed. In 1957, Richard got the role for which she -- or, at least, her image -- would be remembered for 50 years and counting. She was cast in the role of Theresa, the young gymnast who is stalked and killed by the title monster (portrayed by Michael Landon) in I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Ironically, even though she was only on screen a few minutes and her role wasn't remotely the female lead in the film, Richard's scenes were so memorable and visually striking -- as was her own physical beauty -- that she ended up in the poster art for the movie as well as in one of the most widely used publicity stills from the picture, a close-up of her reacting in fear as the fully made-up and monstrous title creature grabs her from behind. The American International Pictures release didn't gain Richard better movies, but it did accelerate her acting career, and in the next couple of years she was in episodes of Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Bachelor Father, and Perry Mason. She was also Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for May of 1957. In films, however, she was limited to low-budget releases such as Unwed Mother (1958), her last feature. Alas, Richard never had a chance to grow as an actress -- in 1959, she met and married producer David L. Wolper, and the two agreed that she would give up her career to raise a family; they were divorced in 1969, but Richard never resumed acting. Thanks to I Was a Teenage Werewolf, however, and its perennial popularity, Richard's face and image remain one of the best known in 1950s horror films, even a half-century later.

Trivia: An editor-turned-director, Los Angeles-born Christian Nyby has led a fascinating career, albeit one better represented in the editing room than from the director's chair. He began work in the movie business as an editor at Warner Bros. during World War II (with Destination Tokyo, Hollywood Canteen, and To Have and Have Not), and, with the latter film, became part of Howard Hawks' crew, and worked on The Big Sleep (1944), undoubtedly taking part in the recutting of that movie after its initial showings to servicemen were received with complaints that its didn't contain enough scenes of stars Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall together. He also worked on other filmmakers' pictures, including Raoul Walsh's complex western/noir classic Pursued (1946). Nyby was sometimes put into an awkward position -- as editors can be -- by virtue of the complications surrounding Hawks' movies, most notably on Red River (1948) -- director/producer Hawks, having finished the sprawling western film late, was obligated to leave for Europe for his next picture, and had to shorten the film, which had tested poorly for length in previews. Then Howard Hughes threatened to sue for alleged plagiarism, claiming that some plot elements of Red River's ending had been lifted from Hughes's 1943 production of The Outlaw (which Hawks had worked on briefly). Hawks was forced to leave Nyby with Hughes to settle their differences regarding Red River, and the resulting movie -- cut to Hughes' demands to meet an impending release date -- was a far lesser movie than the version originally previewed. Still, the movie got out, and became regarded as a classic -- fortunately, the version originally assembled by Hawks and Nyby survived, and was released, initially by mistake and later by design, to an appreciative public during the '60s, and restored to 35mm in the '80s. Nyby's involvement with Hawks' production of The Thing (1951) has always been controversial as well -- he is credited as director, Hawks as producer, but the style of the film is so thoroughly Hawks' own, that most people have rightly assumed that the director/producer was either sitting in the director's chair or looking directly over his protege's shoulder, and Hawks himself admitted to giving Nyby director's credit on the picture in order to get his protege his Directors Guild membership. Certainly none of Nyby's subsequent movies, including Hell on Devil's Island (1957), Young Fury, Operation CIA (1965), or First to Fight (1967), showed anything resembling the stylistic flair or tautness of The Thing.

Trivia: Russell Garcia started out in music as a child prodigy, teaching himself the cornet, as well as how to read music, while still a young boy. He later received formal training with figures such as Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and got his first formal job in music through the radio, taking a conductor's spot on a popular program. Best known since the 1950s as a conductor, composer, arranger, and trumpeter, he has worked with figures such as Roy Eldridge, Stan Kenton, et al. He also spent more than a decade at Universal Pictures as an arranger and composer in their music department. He had two early low-budget composing credits at the outset of the 1950s, but it wasn't until the early '60s that Garcia got to show his real abilities in this area, on a proper cinematic canvas, with the scores for a pair of George Pal-produced fantasy films, The Time Machine and Atlantis, the Lost Continent. Those soundtracks might well have established him as an important name in the scoring of such genre movies, but he was never able to follow them up, and apart from two subsequent scoring credits (one of them a Western) in the middle of the 1960s, Garcia's major film composing career was limited to that pair of George Pal productions.

Trivia: Slim, sloe-eyed, dark-haired actress Gail Patrick was once the 21-year-old Dean of women students at her alma mater of Howard College, and briefly studied law at University of Alabama. She was brought to Paramount during that studio's nationwide contest to find an actress to play "the Panther Woman" in Island of Lost Souls (1932). Patrick lost this role to Kathleen Burke, but won a Paramount contract, and co-starred in the studio's horror film follow-up to Island of Lost Souls, 1933's Murders in the Zoo. She played several leading roles -- including a lady lawyer in Disbarred (1939) -- but was more effective as a villainess or "other woman"; her elegant truculence was one of the highlights of the 1936 screwball comedy My Man Godfrey. Patrick's third husband was Thomas Cornwall Jackson, literary agent of Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner. Retired from acting since 1948, Patrick and her husband co-produced the popular Perry Mason TV series, which ran from 1957 through 1966. She made a brief return to acting as a judge in the final Mason episode, which also featured Erle Stanley Gardner himself in a bit role. After her 1969 divorce from Jackson, Patrick attempted to revive Paul Mason for television in 1973, but Monte Markham proved an inadequate substitute for Raymond Burr. Gail Patrick Jackson died of leukemia in 1980.