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: Of Russian descent, American actor Basil Ruysdael was a successful opera singer in the 'teens and twenties. Firmly based in New York, Ruysdael made his first screen appearance in the Marx Brothers Astoria-filmed The Cocoanuts (1929). His portrayal of Detective Hennessy in this film was ordinary enough, save for his hilarious vocal rendition of "Tale of a Shirt," an elaborate parody of "The Toreador Song" from Bizet's Carmen. Ruysdael remained in Manhattan for nearly two decades after Cocoanuts, working on the stage, in radio, and in the occasional film short. He moved to California in 1949, showing up in no fewer than six films during his first year in Hollywood. Active until his death in 1960, Ruysdael was invariably cast as orotund authority figures: military officers, judges, governors, college deans. During the early 1950s, Basil Ruysdael was the radio and TV spokesperson for Lucky Strike cigarettes, imparting in pear-shaped tones the vital message "L.S.M.F.T....Lucky Strikes Means Fine Tobacco."

Trivia: Along with Marilyn Monroe and Paul Valentine, actor Bruce Gordon was given an "Introducing" credit in the 1949 Marx Brothers opus Love Happy. The swarthy, cleft-chinned Gordon played one of the henchmen of villainess Ilona Massey (the other henchman was Raymond Burr). After spending the 1950s in "heavy" film roles, Gordon was shown in a rare heroic light as American intelligence agent Matson on the 1958 TV series Behind Closed Doors. One year later, Gordon first essayed the role with which he will forever be associated: Frank Nitti, scowling second-in-command of Al Capone (Neville Brand) on the weekly TVer The Untouchables. Thereafter, Bruce Gordon was almost invariably cast as a mobster -- though often with a morbidly humorous streak, as witness his characterization of media-savvy syndicate boss Mr. Devere on the 1966 sitcom Run, Buddy, Run.

Trivia: Austrian-born actress Vanessa Brown was on the Broadway stage from age 13 in Watch on the Rhine, and at the same time was featured as a contestant on the popular radio series Quiz Kids. Billed as Tessa Brind, Vanessa made her screen bow in the Val Lewton-produced study of wartime juvenile delinquency Youth Runs Wild (1944). She became "Vanessa Brown" for good with 1946's I've Always Loved You, spending the next six years as a popular film ingenue. In 1950 Brown joined the ever-growing ranks of movie "Janes" in Tarzan and the Slave Girl. She also appeared in the 1955 sitcom My Favorite Husband, replacing the series' original star, Joan Caulfield. Brown retired from films to marry director Mark Sandrich Jr. in the mid-'50s, returning briefly before the cameras in 1967. Vanessa worked on the 1977 satirical TV soap opera All That Glitters, and also had a recurring role on the still-thriving real soap opera General Hospital. Back in radio in the early '70s, Vanessa was an occasional guest speaker on the short-wave Voice of America service. In her later years, Vanessa Brown added writing to her accomplishments, penning two books and several magazine articles.

Trivia: A veteran character actor whose five-year career spanned from the stages of Broadway to the shimmering light of film and television, Robert P. Lieb began his acting career as a dead man in the Broadway play Mr. and Mrs. North before his career sprang to life with small-screen appearances in Perry Mason and Hazel. A native of Pelham, NY, Lieb attended N.Y.U. before appearing on Broadway in Death of a Salesman and Harvey among numerous other productions. In addition to his stage work, Lieb made an impression on television audiences with appearances in Sgt. Bilko, Playhouse 90, and a memorable turn as a bemused police officer opposite Art Carney on a Christmas episode of The Twilight Zone. From the 1960s through the 1990s, Lieb could be seen frequently on television, and frequent feature roles in The Fortune Cookie (1966), Clambake (1967), and The Parallax View (1974) found him in steady demand. Following complications from intestinal surgery, Robert P. Lieb died in late September 2002. He was 88.

Trivia: American comic character actor Allan Melvin worked on stage, radio, screen, and television, where he is best remembered for playing Sam the Butcher, the love interest of beloved housekeeper Alice on The Brady Bunch. He also appeared as Sergeant Bilko's right-hand man The Phil Silvers Show, and as Archie Bunker's best friend on All in the Family). Melvin also worked in commercials and voiced many animated cartoons. He died of cancer in January 2008 at age 84.

Trivia: A longtime theater actress with a handful of movies to her credit and work in dozens of filmed and live prime-time television dramas, Frances Reid was best known for the last 44 years of her life for her portrayal of Alice Horton on the soap opera Days of Our Lives. From the show's first broadcast on NBC, on November 8, 1965, until her last on-air appearance in 2007, she was the matriarchal presence on the series -- a loving wife, mother, and grandmother (and, ultimately, great-great-grandmother), known for her wise counsel, patient nature, occasional bravery, and also for her homemade doughnuts. Reid was born in 1914, in Wichita Falls, TX, but was raised in Berkeley, CA, where her father was a banker. She trained at the Pasadena Playhouse, and in the 1930s appeared in a series of Broadway shows, as well as in a handful of movies, in small, uncredited roles (most notably in Gregory La Cava's Stage Door [1937], starring Katharine Hepburn). Reid made her television debut unusually early, in a 1939 production of Little Women in the role of Beth March, on NBC. As a New York-based actress in the late '40s and '50s, she worked regularly in television, mostly in dramatic roles and on anthology series, and Reid's East Coast presence also allowed her to get her voice into Alfred Hitchcock's New York-filmed production of The Wrong Man (1956). She also starred in two soap operas, Portia Faces Life and As the World Turns, in the 1950s and early '60s, and admitted to not appreciating the grind of the daytime drama format. During the 1950s, Reid was also busy primarily in theater, and won special praise for her work in the classics, most notably her Roxane, opposite José Ferrer, in Cyrano De Bergerac, which was described as "enchanting" by Brooks Atkinson, the New York Times critic. By 1965, however, Reid had turned 40 and discovered that roles for women in that age group were increasingly scarce. It was then that she took on the part of Alice Horton on Days of Our Lives. Her character's main issues in that more innocent age concerned her oldest son, Tommy, who had been reported as missing in action in the Korean War; and the empty nest left behind as her other children had grown up and moved out. In later decades, the plots involving Alice Horton and her doctor husband, Tom (played by Hitchcock alumnus MacDonald Carey), came to involve kidnappings and other, wilder notions, and even Alice's apparent death. She outlived Carey by 15 years, and continued in the role onscreen through 2007 -- long before that, even non-soap opera fans marveled at the love and devotion that Reid displayed in her long-running portrayal. The series' annual Christmas tree-decorating episode, in which Alice Horton was inevitably at the center, remained a beloved event, right into the 21st century. Reid received a Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004 for her work on the series.

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: A one-time Miss California, American actress Sheila Bromley came to films relatively late; she was 26 when she appeared in her first movie, Idol of the Crowds (1937). While she had several short-term starlet contracts over the years, principally at Columbia, Fox and Warner Bros., Bromley's credits are hard to trace, simply because she spent so much time not being Sheila Bromley. At various points in her career she billed herself as Sheila Manners, Sheila Mannors and Sheila Fulton, seldom rising above B-picture status under any of those names. On TV, she was a regular on the popular sitcom I Married Joan (1952-55), billed again as Sheila Bromley. After nearly twenty years in such disposable second features as Torture Ship (1939), Calling Philo Vance (1940), Time to Kill (1942) and Young Jesse James (1950), "Sheila Bromley/Manners/Mannors/Fulton" retired, returning several years later for small roles in major 1960s productions like Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and Hotel (1966). In 1965, Sheila Bromley had a continuing featured role on the NBC TV daytime drama Morning Star.

Trivia: Already a character player in his 30s, American actor Robert Cornwaithe was frequently called upon to play scientific and learned types in such films as War of the Worlds (1953) and The Forbin Project (1971). He was also busy on TV, portraying lawyers, officials and the like on such series as The Andy Griffith Show, Batman (in the "Archer" episode with Art Carney), Gidget, Laverne and Shirley and The Munsters. Cornwaithe earned his niche in the Science Fiction Film Hall of Fame for his performance in The Thing (1951); grayed up, bearded, and looking suspiciously Russian, the actor played the foolhardy Professor Carrington, whose insipidly idealistic efforts to communicate with the extraterrestrial "Thing" nearly gets him killed. In honor of this performance, Robert Cornwaithe was cast as a similar well-meaning scientist in "Mant," the giant-insect film within a film in Joe Dante's Matinee (1993), wherein Cornwaithe shared screen time with two equally uncredited horror-film icons, William Schallert and Kevin McCarthy.

Trivia: A stage actor since the 1920s, Kenneth MacDonald found the going rough in Hollywood until he published and distributed a pamphlet titled "The Case of Kenneth MacDonald." This little self-promotional book brought him to the attention of studio executives, and throughout the 1930s MacDonald could be seen as a mustachioed, mellifluous-voiced villain in scores of westerns and melodramas. His work in the Charles Starrett westerns at Columbia led to a lengthy association with that studio. From 1940 through 1954, MacDonald played featured roles in such Columbia productions as Island of Doomed Men (1940), Power of the Whistler (1945) and The Caine Mutiny (1954); he was also prominently cast in the studio's short subjects, especially in the comedies of the Three Stooges and Hugh Herbert, his most familiar role being that of a society criminal or shyster lawyer. During the 1960s, Kenneth MacDonald was a semi-regular on the Perry Mason TV series, playing a solemn judge.

Trivia: In films from 1941, American character actor Norman Leavitt spent much of his career in uncredited bits and supporting roles. Leavitt can briefly be seen in such "A" pictures of the 1940s and 1950s as The Inspector General (1949) and Harvey (1950). His larger roles include Folsom in the 1960 budget western Young Jesse James. Three Stooges fans will immediately recognize Norman Leavitt from The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962), in which he player scientist Emil Sitka's sinister butler--who turned out to be a spy from Mars!

Trivia: A favorite of producer/director Jack Webb, character actor Ralph Moody was a familiar face to viewers of Dragnet in both its 1950s and 1960s incarnations -- but that would be an unfair (as well as inaccurate) way to describe an actor who amassed hundreds of film and television appearances in barely 20 years of movie and television work. Born in St. Louis, MO, in 1886, Moody didn't make his screen debut until 1948, with a small role in Man Eaters of Kumaon. Already in his sixties, he always looked older than he was, and his craggy features could also impart a fierceness that made him threatening. Although Moody was known for playing kindly or crotchety old men, he occasionally brought that fierceness to bear, as in the Adventures of Superman episode "Test of a Warrior", in which he played the sinister medicine man Okatee. But in between that and dozens of other one-off television assignments, Moody also managed to work in scenes as the coffin-boat skipper in Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street and one of the rescue workers in Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole. Moody was one of those actors who could work quickly and milk a line or a scene for all its emotional worth. What's more, he could do it without over-emoting. He was the kind of character player that directors and producers in budget-conscious television of the 1950s needed. In an episode of Circus Boy, he played a touching scene with a young Micky Dolenz, as an aging railroad engineer introducing the boy to the world of locomotives and trains. After that, Moody got called back to do three more episodes. But it was Jack Webb who really put him to work in Dragnet and many of his other productions, in radio and feature films as well as television. His more memorable appearances on Dragnet included "The Big Producer", as a once-famous movie producer who is reduced to selling pornographic pictures to high-school students, and "The Hammer", from the 1967 revival of the series, in which he portrayed the neighbor of a murder victim. Moody continued working regularly in television until a year before his death in 1971, at age 84. His final appearance was in the Night Gallery episode "The Little Black Bag".

Trivia: Probably no one came by the label "Runyon-esque" more honestly than Polish-born actor George E. Stone; a close friend of writer Damon Runyon, Stone was seemingly put on this earth to play characters named Society Max and Toothpick Charlie, and to mouth such colloquialisms as "It is known far and wide" and "More than somewhat." Starting his career as a Broadway "hoofer," the diminutive Stone made his film bow as "the Sewer Rat" in the 1927 silent Seventh Heaven. His most prolific film years were 1929 to 1936, during which period he showed up in dozens of Warner Bros. "urban" films and backstage musicals, and also appeared as the doomed Earle Williams in the 1931 version of The Front Page. He was so closely associated with gangster parts by 1936 that Warners felt obligated to commission a magazine article showing Stone being transformed, via makeup, into an un-gangsterish Spaniard for Anthony Adverse (1936). For producer Hal Roach, Stone played three of his oddest film roles: a self-pitying serial killer in The Housekeeper's Daughter (1938), an amorous Indian brave in Road Show (1940), and Japanese envoy Suki Yaki in The Devil With Hitler (1942). Stone's most popular role of the 1940s was as "the Runt" in Columbia's Boston Blackie series. In the late '40s, Stone was forced to severely curtail his acting assignments due to failing eyesight. Though he was totally blind by the mid-'50s, Stone's show business friends, aware of the actor's precarious financial state, saw to it that he got TV and film work, even if it meant that his co-stars had to literally lead him by the hand around the set. No one was kinder to George E. Stone than the cast and crew of the Perry Mason TV series, in which Stone was given prominent billing as the Court Clerk, a part that required nothing more of him than sitting silently at a desk and occasionally holding a Bible before a witness.

Trivia: Supporting actor James Callahan appeared onscreen from 1959.