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: A tough-looking, blond Warner Bros. starlet of the mid-'40s, Minnesota-born Peggy Knudsen made an auspicious screen debut as Mona Mars in the noir classic The Big Sleep (1946). Although a mere bit -- one scene, a couple of lines of dialogue -- the character was much discussed prior to actually appearing in the film and demanded an actress who could match the buildup. The pivotal scene, in which protagonist Humphrey Bogart finds himself at a disadvantage in gangster Eddie Mars' coastal hideaway, had originally been filmed in 1944 with Pat Clarke in the role of Mrs. Mars. But when negative previews necessitated scenes to be added or re-shot, director Howard Hawks replaced Miss Clarke with Knudsen, a much more vibrant presence who made her few moments count. It should have been a major breakthrough for the actress but Warner Bros. missed the opportunity and instead assigned her standard "other woman" roles opposite Erroll Flynn in the marital comedy Never Say Goodbye (1946) and Ronald Reagan in the horse breeding drama Stallion Road (1947). 20th Century Fox borrowed her for a couple of B-movies, in one of which, Trouble Preferred (1948), she was top-billed as a policewoman in training, but they were too inexpensive to have much impact. Missing out on stardom, she went on to appear in supporting roles through the 1950s, both in feature films and on television, retiring after a guest spot on Texas John Slaughter (1961). The victim of a crippling arthritic condition that eventually necessitated five operations, Knudsen was reportedly cared for by lifelong friend Jennifer Jones. Her death in 1980 was attributed to cancer.

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: Mari Aldon was a leading lady in Hollywood films during the early 1950s. She was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. As a teen she trained as a ballet dancer for six years before going on to work on stage and in radio. Marriage curtailed her brief film career.

Trivia: The son of an itinerant piano tuner-father and a restaurateur-mother, Richard Erdman was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Colorado. Having taken drama lessons since his early childhood, Erdman was 15 when he was brought to Hollywood by his mother to be "discovered." It wasn't until he'd held down an interim job as a sports reporter for the Los Angeles Examiner that Erdman finally appeared in his first film, Warner Bros.' Janie (1944). Rapidly outgrowing juvenile roles, Erdman played character parts in Hollywood films like Stalag 17 (1953) and in such European productions as Four Days Leave (1950) and Face of Fire (1959). In 1961, Erdman co-starred on the short-lived sitcom The Tab Hunter Show, playing Tab's millionaire-playboy buddy, Peter Fairchild III. In 1973, Erdman made his big-screen directorial debut with The Brothers O'Toole. Since that time, Richard Erdman has kept busy as a voice-over actor, offering a wide range of vocal characterizations for dozens of TV cartoon series, as well as the 1994 animated feature film The Pagemaster.

Trivia: After briefly attending the College of the Pacific, Barbara Baxley headed to New York to pursue an acting career. Barbara studied at Sanford Meisner's Neighborhood Playhouse, then went on to become a charter member of the Actor's Studio. After making her New York stage bow in the 1948 revival of Private Lives, she spent the next several years taking over for a number of "big-name" actresses in long-running Broadway plays. She also starred in the original productions of Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Period of Adjustment, and worked extensively off-Broadway in projects like Brecht on Brecht. In the company of several of her Actor's Studios colleagues, Barbara made her film debut in East of Eden (1955), playing the nurse in the closing scenes. Other roles in her feature-film manifest included country-western matriarch Lady Pearl in Nashville (1975) and Leona in Norma Rae (1979). On television, Barbara was one of the stars of Norman Lear's satirical gender-switch soap opera All That Glitters (1977). In June of 1990, 62-year-old Barbara Baxley was found dead in her New York apartment, apparently the victim of heart failure.

Trivia: Strappingly handsome leading man Grant Withers worked as an oil company salesman and newspaper reporter before he turned to acting in 1926. One of the more popular second echelon stars of the early '30s, Withers was unable to sustain his celebrity. By the end of the 1930s, Withers was pretty much limited to character roles and bits, with such notable exceptions as the recurring role of the brash Lt. Street in Monogram's Mr. Wong series. In 1930, Withers eloped with 17-year-old actress Loretta Young, but the marriage was later annulled. Some of Withers' later screen appearances were arranged through the auspices of his friends John Ford and John Wayne. Grant Withers committed suicide in 1959, leaving behind a note in which he apologized to all the people he'd let down during his Hollywood days.

Trivia: Wally Brown built up his reputation in vaudeville as a fast-talking (albeit low-pressure) monologist. In 1942, Brown decided to settle down in Hollywood with a contract at RKO Radio Pictures, making his movie-debut in Petticoat Larceny (1943). When RKO decided to emulate the success of Universal's Abbott and Costello, the studio teamed Brown with short, stocky Alan Carney for a series of energetic but undistinguished "B" pictures, the first of which was the Buck Privates wannabe Adventures of a Rookie (1943). Brown and Carney used the same character names (Brown played Jerry Miles, while Carney played Mike Strager) in each of their starring films--which is just as well, since the movies are virtually impossible to tell apart. Arguably the team's best film was 1945's Zombies on Broadway. RKO folded Brown and Carney in 1946, after which both actors continued working in films as solo character performers; they would be reunited, after a fashion, in the 1961 Disney film The Absent Minded Professor. Wally Brown spent most of his last decade as a prolific TV guest star; his last performance, telecast posthumously, was an appearance on My Three Sons.

Trivia: There was always something slightly sinister about American actor Carleton G. Young that prevented him from traditional leading man roles. Young always seemed to be hiding something, to be looking over his shoulder, or to be poised to head for the border; as such, he was perfectly cast in such roles as the youthful dope peddler in the 1936 camp classic Reefer Madness. Even when playing a relatively sympathetic role, Young appeared capable of going off the deep end at any minute, vide his performance in the 1937 serial Dick Tracy as Tracy's brainwashed younger brother. During the 1940s and 1950s, Young was quite active in radio, where he was allowed to play such heroic leading roles as Ellery Queen and the Count of Monte Cristo without his furtive facial expressions working against him. As he matured into a greying character actor, Young became a special favorite of director John Ford, appearing in several of Ford's films of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1962's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it is Young, in the small role of a reporter, who utters the unforgettable valediction "This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact...print the legend." Carleton G. Young was the father of actor Tony Young, who starred in the short-lived 1961 TV Western Gunslinger.

Trivia: Muscle-bound Mexican-born character actor Max Wagner kept busy in films from 1931 to 1957. Seldom given a line to speak, Wagner showed up in innumerable small roles as thugs, sailors, bodyguards, cabbies, and moving men. In one of his better-known assignments, he played an actor pretending to be the gangster character played by Barton MacLaine in the film-within-a-film segment in Bullets or Ballots (1936). Max Wagner's thick Latino accent served him well in such brief roles as the bull-farm attendant in Laurel and Hardy's The Bullfighters (1945).