Trivia: The day after 79-year-old Robert Mitchum succumbed to lung cancer, beloved actor James Stewart died, diverting all the press attention that was gearing up for Mitchum. So it has been for much of his career. Not that Mitchum wasn't one of Hollywood's most respected stars, he was. But unlike the wholesome middle-American idealism and charm of the blandly handsome Stewart, there was something unsettling and dangerous about Mitchum. He was a walking contradiction. Behind his drooping, sleepy eyes was an alert intelligence. His tall, muscular frame, broken nose, and lifeworn face evoked a laborer's life, but he moved with the effortless, laid-back grace of a highly trained athlete. Early in his career critics generally ignored Mitchum, who frequently appeared in lower-budget and often low-quality films. This may also be due in part to his subtle, unaffected, and deceptively easy-going acting style that made it seem as if Mitchum just didn't care, an attitude he frequently put on outside the studio. But male and female audiences alike found Mitchum appealing. Mitchum generally played macho heroes and villains who lived hard and spoke roughly, and yet there was something of the ordinary Joe in him to which male audiences could relate. Women were drawn to his physique, his deep resonant voice, his sexy bad boy ways, and those sad, sagging eyes, which Mitchum claimed were caused by chronic insomnia and a boxing injury. He was born Robert Charles Duran Mitchum in Bridgeport, CT, and as a boy was frequently in trouble, behavior that was perhaps related to his father's death when Mitchum was quite young. He left home in his teens. Mitchum was famous for fabricating fantastic tales about his life, something he jokingly encouraged others to do too. If he is to be believed, he spent his early years doing everything from mining coal, digging ditches, and ghost writing for astrologer Carroll Richter, to fighting 27 bouts as a prizefighter. He also claimed to have escaped from a Georgia chain gang six days after he was arrested for vagrancy. Mitchum settled down in 1940 and married Dorothy Spence. They moved to Long Beach, CA, and he found work as a drop-hammer operator with Lockheed Aircraft. The job made Mitchum ill so he quit. He next started working with the Long Beach Theater Guild in 1942 and this led to his becoming a movie extra and bit player, primarily in war movies and Westerns, but also in the occasional comedy or drama. His first film role was that of a model in the documentary The Magic of Make-up (1942). Occasionally he would bill himself as Bob Mitchum during this time period. His supporting role in The Human Comedy (1943) led to a contract with RKO. Two years later, he starred in The Story of G.I. Joe and earned his first and only Oscar nomination. Up to that point, Mitchum was considered little more than a "beefcake" actor, one who was handsome, but who lacked the chops to become a serious player. He was also drafted that year and served eight months in the military, most of which he spent promoting his latest film before he was given a dependency discharge. Mitchum returned to movies soon after, this time in co-starring and leading roles. His role as a woman's former lover who may or may not have killed her new husband in When Strangers Marry (1944) foreshadowed his import in the developing film noir genre. The very qualities that led critics to dismiss him, his laconic stoicism, his self-depreciating wit, cynicism, and his naturalism, made Mitchum the perfect victim for these dark dramas; indeed, he became an icon for the genre. The Locket (1946) provided Mitchum his first substantial noir role, but his first important noir was Out of the Past (1947), a surprise hit that made him a real star. Up until Cape Fear (1962), Mitchum had played tough guy heroes and world-weary victims; he provided the dying noir genre with one of its cruelest villains, Max Cady. In 1955, Mitchum played one of his most famous and disturbing villains, the psychotic evangelist Reverend Harry Powell, in Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter, a film that was a critical and box-office flop in its first release, but has since become a classic. While his professional reputation grew, Mitchum's knack for getting into trouble in his personal life reasserted itself. He was arrested in August 1948, in the home of actress Lila Leeds for allegedly possessing marijuana and despite his hiring two high-calibre lawyers, spent 60 days in jail. Mitchum claimed he was framed and later his case was overturned and his record cleared. Though perhaps never involved with marijuana, Mitchum made no apologies for his love of alcohol and cigarettes. He had also been involved with several public scuffles, this in contrast with the Mitchum who also wrote poetry and the occasional song. Though well known for noir, Mitchum was versatile, having played in romances (Heaven Knows Mr. Allison [1957]), literary dramas (The Red Pony [1949]), and straight dramas (The Sundowners [1960], in which he played an Australian sheepherder). During the '60s, Mitchum had only a few notable film roles, including Two for the See Saw (1962), Howard Hawks' El Dorado (1967), and 5 Card Stud (1968). He continued playing leads through the 1970s. Some of his most famous efforts from this era include The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) and a double stint as detective Phillip Marlowe in Farewell My Lovely (1975) and The Big Sleep (1978). Mitchum debuted in television films in the early '80s. His most notable efforts from this period include the miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and its sequel, War and Remembrance (1989). Mitchum also continued appearing in feature films, often in cameo roles. Toward the end of his life, he found employment as a commercial voice-over artist, notably in the "Beef, it's what's for dinner" campaign. A year before his death, Robert Mitchum was diagnosed with emphysema, and a few months afterward, lung cancer. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy, his daughter, Petrine, and two sons, Jim and Christopher, both of whom are actors.

Trivia: A cultured actress renowned for her elegance and dignity, Deborah Kerr was one of the leading ladies of Hollywood's Golden Age. Born Deborah Kerr-Trimmer in Helensburgh, Scotland, on September 30, 1921, she was first trained as a dancer at her aunt's drama school in Bristol, England. After winning a scholarship to the Sadlers Wells Ballet School, Kerr made her London stage debut at age 17 in Prometheus. Meanwhile, she developed an interest in acting and began getting bit parts and walk-ons in Shakespeare productions. While continuing to appear in various London stage plays, Kerr debuted onscreen in 1940 and went on to roles in a number of British films over the next seven years, often playing cool, reserved, well-bred young ladies. Her portrayal of a nun in Black Narcissus (1947) earned a New York Film Critics Best Actress award and led to an invitation from Hollywood to co-star opposite Clark Gable in The Hucksters. She remained in Hollywood, playing long-suffering, prim, proper, ladylike types until 1953, when she broke her typecast mold by portraying a passionate adulteress in From Here to Eternity, a part for which she had fought. Kerr's range of roles broadened further after that, and she began to appear in British films again. In 1953, Kerr debuted on Broadway to great acclaim in Tea and Sympathy, later reprising her role in the play's 1956 screen version. That same year, she starred as an English governess sent to tutor the children of the King of Siam in one of the most popular films of her career, The King and I. Kerr retired from the screen in 1969, having received six Best Actress Oscar nominations without an award, although she did receive an honorary Oscar in 1994. She had been honored with a special BAFTA award three years earlier in Britain, and, in 1998, she was further honored in her native land with a Companion of the Order of the British Empire. Kerr, who graced the screen one last time in the The Assam Garden (1985), died of complications related to Parkinson's Disease in October 2007. She was 86.

Trivia: Hirsute, puckish "renaissance man" Peter Ustinov was born in England to parents of Russian lineage. Trained at the London Theatre Studio, Ustinov was on stage from the age of 17, performing sketches written by himself in the 1939 revue Late Joys. In 1940, the year that his first play, Fishing for Shadows, was staged, the 19-year-old Ustinov appeared in his first film. Just before entering the British army, Ustinov penned his first screenplay, The True Glory (1945). School for Secrets (1946) was the first of several films starring, written, and directed by Ustinov; others include Vice Versa (1946), Private Angelo (1949), Romanoff and Juliet (1961) (adapted from his own stage play), and Lady L (1965). Perhaps Ustinov's most ambitious film directorial project was Billy Budd (1962), a laudable if not completely successful attempt to transfer the allegorical style of Herman Melville to the screen. As an actor in films directed by others, Ustinov has sparkled in parts requiring what can best be described as "justifiable ham" -- he was Oscar-nominated for his riveting performance as the addled Nero in 1951's Quo Vadis and has won the Best Supporting Actor prize for Spartacus (1961) and Topkapi (1964). Never one to turn down a good television assignment, Ustinov has appeared on American TV in such guises as King George and Dr. Samuel Johnson, winning the first of his three Emmy awards for the latter characterization; he is also a frequent talk show guest, regaling audiences with his droll wit and his mastery over several dialects. While he has never starred on-camera in a weekly TV series, his voice could be heard essaying virtually all the roles on the 1981 syndicated cartoon series Dr. Snuggles. The closest he has come to repeating himself was with his frequent theatrical film and TV-movie appearances as Agatha Christie's Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, in the late '70s and early '80s. The author of several plays (the most popular of which included Love of Four Colonels and Photo Finish) and books (including two autobiographies), Peter Ustinov was still going strong into the 1990s, making a long-overdue return to Hollywood in the 1992 film Lorenzo's Oil.

Trivia: An actor-turned production assistant-turned-director, Michael Anderson had a relatively undistinguished record in motion pictures until the mid 1950s, when he directed The Dam Busters. One of the more successful British films about World War II, it involved mixed drama and special effects work in a combination that pointed the way toward Anderson's later career in international pictures. His mid 1950s version of 1984 received mixed notices but wide distribution, and Around The World In 80 Days brought him into international prominence, despite producer Michael Todd being the dominant personality involved in shaping the movie, and Anderson worked in the United States as often as he did in England over the next two decades. Operation Crossbow and The Shoes of the Fisherman were dramas featuring international casts and large canvases for their action, in which Anderson largely held the proceedings together, in spite of major script problems. His most popular movie, other than Around The World In 80 Days, is the science-fiction adventure Logan's Run, in which he once again overcame a weak script by getting some strong performances out of his actors and pulling them together around extremely impressive special-effects sequences.

Trivia: Throaty-voiced, kittenish leading lady Glynis Johns was the daughter of British stage actor Mervyn Johns; she was born while her father and concert-pianist mother were on a tour of South Africa. Enrolled in the London ballet school at age 6, Johns had by age 10 progressed to the point that she was certified to teach ballet. At 12, she made her stage debut in the role of Napoleon's daughter in Saint Helena; at 13, she was cast in the pivotal role of the spiteful schoolgirl in the London production of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour. This led to her first film, 1937's South Riding, in which she played another petulant, foot-stamping adolescent. Johns graduated to coquettish leading roles in the 1940s, most famously as the alluring mermaid in Miranda (1946). Her best-known Hollywood assignments include the roles of Maid Jean in Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1956) and the suffragette Mrs. Banks in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964) (Johns was the only cast member to have the foresight to demand a portion of the royalties for the Poppins soundtrack record). In 1963, she starred in Glynis, a lukewarm TV comedy/mystery series. Eight years later, she won a Tony award for her performance in Broadway's A Little Night Music. Still active into the 1990s, Glynis Johns was recently seen as a belligerent in-law in The Ref (1994) and as a deliciously dotty aunt in While You Were Sleeping (1995).

Trivia: A bona fide member of the American aristocracy (her father was Wall Street magnate E.F. Hutton and her mother, Marjorie Merriweather Post, was heiress to a huge cereal fortune), Dina Merrill (born Nedinia Hutton) dropped out of George Washington University in the 1940s to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and become an actress. She spent ten years on-stage, including Broadway, performed on television, and made her Hollywood debut in Desk Set (1957). The cool, sophisticated, blonde supporting actress was typically cast as an heiress or socialite. She married actor Cliff Robertson in 1966 and took a decade off, but for a few television movie appearances, to raise a family until returning to films in 1975. In 1988, she launched Pavilion, an entertainment development and production company with her new lover, investment banker Ted Hartley. The two married in 1989. After the late '80s, Merrill started appearing more frequently in features and television movies.

Trivia: Chips Rafferty was frequently described as "the Cary Grant of Australia," a reflection of his immense popularity rather than his choice of roles. Rafferty enjoyed a wide variety of on- and off-stage experiences before making his film bow in 1938's Ants in His Pants. Tall, tanned, and rugged, Rafferty seemed equally at home in an open-necked shirt in the Outback as he did in fancy duds on the streets of Melbourne -- much in the manner of his more modern counterpart, American leading man Sam Elliot. Rafferty's most popular starring films included Bush Christmas (1946), The Overlanders (1946), and Eureka Stockade (1948). He also appeared in character roles in several American films and TV programs, often cast as a "Lord-love-a-duck" stereotyped Aussie. Chips Rafferty collapsed on a Sydney street and died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 62.

Trivia: Veteran Australian character actor John Meillon is best remembered for playing Paul Hogan's partner in Crocodile Dundee (1988) and its sequel, but his film career began in 1959 when he played a sailor in Stanley Kubrick's On the Beach. Meillon made his acting debut at age 11 on the radio and the year after first performed on-stage. He spent the early '60s in Britain where he appeared in such films as The Longest Day (1962), but returned to Australia mid-decade. He gained national fame when he starred in the popular television series My Name's McGooley, What's Yours? Meillon spent the rest of his career working in television and feature films.

Trivia: A purveyor of priggish military and law-enforcement types, British actor Ronald Fraser began his film and TV career in 1954 as a bit actor, then graduated to supporting roles. On occasion, Fraser was allowed to play a compassionate human being, but for the most part he was the personification of the "nasty little nit." Some of his larger film appearances are in The Sundowners (1960), The Best of Enemies (1961), Killing of Sister George (1968) and The Bed Sitting Room (1969). American audiences are probably most familiar with Ronald Fraser's performance as Sergeant Watson, one of the gutsier members of Jimmy Stewart's ill-fated airplane crew in Flight of the Phoenix (1965).

Trivia: Upon graduation from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (he'd been a medical student before deciding upon an acting career), Welsh-born Mervyn Johns spent several years as a touring actor in England, Australia and South Africa. He made his first film appearance in 1934. Significant credits in Johns' film manifest include the roles of the confused "throughline" character Walter Craig in the nightmarish multistoried Dead of Night; Bob Cratchit in the 1951 Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol; Friar Lawrence in the 1954 filmization of Romeo and Juliet; and Captain Peleg in John Huston's Moby Dick (1956). The husband of concert pianist Alys Maude Steele-Payne and the father of actress Glynis Johns, Mervyn Johns had been widowed for several years when he wed his second wife, actress Diana Churchill.

Trivia: Born in New Zealand, actor Ewen Solon played character roles onscreen and in television. He is best remembered for playing the detective Maigret in a popular television series.

Trivia: British supporting actor Dick Bentley was well known for his work on radio and on British variety shows. Bentley's many feature films include Desert Mice (1960), The Golden Rabbit (1962), and The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972). Born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, Bentley launched his career as a singer, but turned to acting on stage in 1929, before coming to England at the end of the following year. For many years, he starred on the BBC radio program Gently, Bentley.

Trivia: Australian actor Ray Barrett was one of the more popular leading men on British television in the 1960s; he was on the series The Troubleshooters from 1965-1971 and did voices on the Gerry Anderson marionette series Stingray and Thunderbirds. It was only in the decades that followed that he emerged to big-screen stardom in his native country. Born in Brisbane in 1927, he was fascinated by radio -- then a marvelous new entertainment medium -- and won an on-air talent competition in 1939. At the age of 16, Barrett went to work as an announcer, and later did interviews and even sang on the air. Eventually, he started doing plays, and was put under contract to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, through which he did everything from Shakespeare to tales of Tarzan. He made the jump to television in the early '50s, including an appearance on the adventure series Long John Silver (1955), starring Robert Newton. Barrett also worked with John Bluthal (A Hard Day's Night, Help!) on a comedy series called The Idiot Weekly, and with Spike Milligan on a 1958 television special. In 1959, Barrett moved to England and, over the next few years, appeared in a string of series, including Educating Archie, Armchair Mystery Theatre, Emergency Ward 10, Man of the World, First Night, Harpers West One, Z Cars, Doctor Who, The Saint, and The Avengers. He also made a lasting impression as a voice artist on Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's series Stingray as the voice of Commander Sam Shore (heard at the beginning of every episode's credit sequence) as well as several other characters. He also did the voice of John Tracy (in addition to numerous other characters) in the Anderson series Thunderbirds and the movie adaptation Thunderbirds Are Go! Barrett's film career began in 1960 with a prominent appearance in the drama The Sundowners, starring Robert Mitchum. His other movies during this period included the Val Guest mystery film Jigsaw (1961) and a starring role in the Hammer Films chiller The Reptile (1966). Inn of the Frightened People (1971) was a good showcase for his talents, but it was in the mid-'70s (when he returned to Australia) that he finally became a star. He was cast by Bruce Beresford in a major role in Don's Party (1976), which was widely seen around the world, and then Fred Schepisi used him in a leading role as a racist constable in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978). That portrayal earned Barrett the Australian Film Institute award for Best Supporting Actor (the Aussie equivalent of an Oscar). His performance in Goodbye Paradise (1982) won him the Best Actor Award and he enjoyed starring roles right into the '90s. In the years since, Barrett played major supporting and character roles in such pictures as Blood Oath (1991) and In the Winter Dark (1998). He primarily did TV work in the early 2000s.

Trivia: The son of a noted British filmmaker, Michael Anderson Jr. began his career as an actor in 1957. Playing leading roles in British and American films and television during the '60s, Anderson later continued playing co-leads and supporting roles.

Trivia: Jack Cunningham was an American scriptwriter who started out during the silent era. Cunningham provided continuity for such Douglas Fairbanks epics as The Black Pirate (1925), Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925) and The Iron Mask (1929). He also tied up a few loose plot ends in the location-filmed 1928 effort White Shadows in the South Seas. Working at Paramount in the 1930s, Cunningham did touch-up work and/or full screen treatments for W.C. Fields' Mississippi (1935) and Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935), Harold Lloyd's Professor Beware (1938) and C. B. DeMille's Union Pacific (1939), to name but a few. He was promoted to producer of the 1936 Paramount programmer Easy to Take. Though Cunningham did take on a couple of acting roles late in his career, he should not be confused with the British actor of the same name, who appeared onscreen in the '50s and '60s.

Trivia: In films since he was sixth-billed in 1960's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, British actor Bryan Pringle played effusive character parts for most of his career. He worked extensively in TV and on stage in the '60s and '70s, with time out for occasional movie roles in such films as The Boy Friend. Pringle was notably busy in the late '80s, showing up in such intriguing (if limited in appeal) British films as Drowning By Numbers (1987) and Getting It Right (1989). Though only in his mid 50s, the versatile Bryan Pringle was able to pull off a role described in the credits as Old Englishman in the 1990 comedy Three Men and a Little Lady.

Trivia: Born in New Zealand, actor Colin Tapley was brought to Hollywood as the result of a talent contest. Under contract to Paramount, Tapley played "stiff upper lip" types in such films as Double Door (1934), Murder at the Vanities (1934), The Lives of a Bengal Lancers (1935) (in which, as an Army spy, he was obliged to play his scenes in East Indian disguise) and Peter Ibbetson (1936). In the pioneering Technicolor production Becky Sharp (1935), Tapley looked splendid in his 19th-century military uniform, even though he had practically nothing to do. So it went with his career until 1949, when he left Hollywood to make films in England. Few of his British films were remarkable save for the extremely profitable The Dam Busters (1955), thus Colin Tapley went from erstwhile second lead to character player as his career wound down in the '60s.