Trivia: Left fatherless at the age of four, American actress Lucille Ball developed a strong work ethic in childhood; among her more unusual jobs was as a "seeing eye kid" for a blind soap peddler. Ball's mother sent the girl to the Chautauqua Institution for piano lessons, but she was determined to pursue an acting career after watching the positive audience reaction given to vaudeville monologist Julius Tannen. Young Ball performed in amateur plays for the Elks club and at her high school, at one point starring, staging, and publicizing a production of Charley's Aunt. In 1926, Ball enrolled in the John Murray Anderson American Academy of Dramatic Art in Manhattan (where Bette Davis was the star pupil), but was discouraged by her teachers to continue due to her shyness. Her reticence notwithstanding, Ball kept trying until she got chorus-girl work and modeling jobs; but even then she received little encouragement from her peers, and the combination of a serious auto accident and recurring stomach ailments seemed to bode ill for her theatrical future. Still, Ball was no quitter, and, in 1933, she managed to become one of the singing/dancing Goldwyn Girls for movie producer Samuel Goldwyn; her first picture was Eddie Cantor's Roman Scandals (1933). Working her way up from bit roles at both Columbia Pictures (where one of her assignments was in a Three Stooges short) and RKO Radio, Ball finally attained featured billing in 1935, and stardom in 1938 -- albeit mostly in B-movies. Throughout the late 1930s and '40s, Ball's movie career moved steadily, if not spectacularly; even when she got a good role like the nasty-tempered nightclub star in The Big Street (1942), it was usually because the "bigger" RKO contract actresses had turned it down. By the time she finished a contract at MGM (she was dubbed "Technicolor Tessie" at the studio because of her photogenic red hair and bright smile) and returned to Columbia in 1947, she was considered washed up. Ball's home life was none too secure, either. She'd married Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940, but, despite an obvious strong affection for one another, they had separated and considered divorce numerous times during the war years. Hoping to keep her household together, Ball sought out professional work in which she could work with her husband. Offered her own TV series in 1950, she refused unless Arnaz would co-star. Television was a godsend for the couple; and Arnaz discovered he had a natural executive ability, and was soon calling all the shots for what would become I Love Lucy. From 1951 through 1957, it was the most popular sitcom on television, and Ball, after years of career stops and starts, was firmly established as a megastar in her role of zany, disaster-prone Lucy Ricardo. When her much-publicized baby was born in January 1953, the story received more press coverage than President Eisenhower's inauguration. With their new Hollywood prestige, Ball and Arnaz were able to set up the powerful Desilu Studios production complex, ultimately purchasing the facilities of RKO, where both performers had once been contract players. But professional pressures and personal problems began eroding the marriage, and Ball and Arnaz divorced in 1960, although both continued to operate Desilu. Ball gave Broadway a try in the 1960 musical Wildcat, which was successful but no hit, and, in 1962, returned to TV to solo as Lucy Carmichael on The Lucy Show. She'd already bought out Arnaz's interest in Desilu, and, before selling the studio to Gulf and Western in 1969, Ball had become a powerful executive in her own right, determinedly guiding the destinies of such fondly remembered TV series as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. The Lucy Show ended in the spring of 1968, but Ball was back that fall with Here's Lucy, in which she played "odd job" specialist Lucy Carter and co-starred with her real-life children, Desi Jr. and Lucie. Here's Lucy lasted until 1974, at which time her career took some odd directions. She poured a lot of her own money in a film version of the Broadway musical Mame (1974), which can charitably be labeled an embarrassment. Her later attempts to resume TV production, and her benighted TV comeback in the 1986 sitcom Life With Lucy, were unsuccessful, although Ball, herself, continued to be lionized as the First Lady of Television, accumulating numerous awards and honorariums. Despite her many latter-day attempts to change her image -- in addition to her blunt, commandeering off-stage personality -- Ball would forever remain the wacky "Lucy" that Americans had loved intensely in the '50s. She died in 1989.

Trivia: Born in Kansas, Vivian Vance began appearing in community theater productions when her family relocated to Albuquerque, NM. Her friends and neighbors financed Vance's move to New York, where she planned to study with Eva LeGalliene. When these plans fell through, she made the auditions rounds, landing a job in the long-running Broadway production Music in the Air. She supplemented her income with nightclub performances, then received her big break when, with only a few hours' notice, she stepped into the female lead of the 1937 Ed Wynn musical Hooray for What? Subsequent Broadway credits included Anything Goes, Red, Hot and Blue, and Let's Face It, each one a hit. In 1951, Jose Ferrer cast Vance in the La Jolla Playhouse production of Voice of the Turtle. It was on the strength of her performance of this play that Vance was offered the role of Ethel Mertz on the Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz TV sitcom I Love Lucy. She played Ethel from 1951 through 1960, winning an Emmy in the process -- which hopefully compensated for the fact that, throughout the I Love Lucy run, she was contractually obligated to outweigh star Lucille Ball by 20 pounds. In 1962, Vance signed on for another lengthy co-starring stint with Ball on TV's The Lucy Show. Throughout her five decades in show business, Vance appeared in only three films: The Secret Fury (1950), The Blue Veil (1951), and The Great Race (1965). Married twice, Vivian Vance's first husband was actor Philip Ober.

Trivia: Born in Odessa, Ukraine Leon Belasco was prepared for a musical career at various seats of learning in Japan and Manchuria. For several years, Belasco was first violinist for the Tokyo Symphony, and later led his own orchestra. Though he made his first film in 1926, his Hollywood career proper didn't begin until 1939. Together with Leonid Kinsky and Mischa Auer, Belasco was one of filmdom's favorite comic Russians, usually cast as an excitable musician, choreographer or aesthete. He also registered well in sinister roles, especially in World War II and Cold War espionagers. On radio, Leon Belasco was heard as larcenous informant Pagan Zeldschmidt on The Man Called X; his best-known TV role was Appopoplous the landlord in My Sister Eileen (1960).

Trivia: American actor Wally Cox looked and played the role of the bespectacled, introverted intellectual both before the cameras and in life. Fascinated with all things scientific and devoted to the study of insects, Cox seemed as unlikely a candidate for major stardom as he was an improbable roommate for Marlon Brando. In fact, he was both. While building his reputation in small clubs as a monologist, Cox shared quarters with Brando, his best friend since childhood. Cox didn't really tell jokes in his club act; he would relate the offbeat exploits of his boyhood pal Dufo or do a dead-on imitation of his humorless, doltish Army drill sergeant; these were characterizations rather than routines, a gentler version of the sort of work done years later by Whoopi Goldberg. Playing occasional small parts on TV (he appeared very briefly as a baker in the 1952 film The Sniper, minus his familiar eyeglasses), Cox was tapped by producer Fred Coe to appear in a 1952 summer-replacement comedy series on NBC, Mr. Peepers, where he played Robinson Peepers, the shy, knowledgeable high school teacher at Jefferson High. Mr. Peepers garnered excellent ratings and won numerous awards, including an Emmy for Cox. As big a star as he would ever be, Cox was rushed into numerous nightclub engagements, which unfortunately fell flat because of inappropriate bookings and because audiences didn't want to see Cox as anyone other than Peepers. A 1955 sitcom, The Adventures of Hiram Holliday, starred Wally as an unlikely globe-trotting adventurer; alas, it was scheduled directly opposite ABC's powerhouse Disneyland. Cox would spend most of the rest of his career playing variations of Peepers on other star's sitcoms and variety series, occasionally breaking the mold by playing a murderer or bon vivant. He also tried his hand as a playwright, a field in which he displayed considerable skill. Once again under contract to NBC in the mid '60s, Cox became a regular on the comedy quiz show Hollywood Squares, where he adopted the image of a bored know-it-all. It is this Wally Cox that most viewers remember, not the brilliant comic actor who convinced his '50s fans that he was Mr. Peepers, not just a man playing a part. Wally Cox died of a sudden heart attack in 1973; he was cremated, and his ashes were discreetly scattered at an undisclosed spot (and in defiance of municipal laws) by his old friend and ex-roommate Marlon Brando.

Trivia: Onetime Ziegfeld Follies chorus boy Jack Donohue was a busy Broadway choreographer during the 1930s. He came to Hollywood in 1936 to stage the dances and co-write the screenplay for the Joe E. Brown vehicle Sons o' Guns. A valuable member of MGM's Joe Pasternak musical unit of the 1940s, Donohue choreographed many a Technicolor Esther Williams extravaganza. In 1948, he was given his first opportunity to direct a picture: Close-Up, an Eagle-Lion melodrama which Donohue also co-scripted. Back at MGM, Donohue put Red Skelton through his paces in The Yellow Cab Man (1950) and Watch the Birdie (1951) before moving to Warner Bros., where he returned to musicals. During the 1950s and 1960s Donohue was one of the principal directors for Red Skelton's and Frank Sinatra's TV variety series. Jack Donohue's final big-screen musical was Disney's Babes in Toyland (1961); he closed out his directorial career with two Sinatra vehicles, Marriage on the Rocks (1965) and Assault on a Queen (1966)