Trivia: Along with Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly was the most successful song-and-dance man in film history, a towering figure in the development and enduring success of the movie musical. Born August 23, 1912, in Pittsburgh, PA, he initially studied economics, funding his education by working alternately as a soda jerk and a brick layer. With brother Fred, he also gave dancing lessons. In 1937, the Kelly brothers both unsuccessfully sought choreography work in New York. A year later, however, Gene was cast in the chorus of Leave It to Me, and in 1939 he graduated to a small role in the revue One for the Money. A more prominent performance in the drama The Time of Your Life caught the attention of Richard Rodgers, who cast him as the titular Pal Joey. Kelly left Broadway for Hollywood when David O. Selznick offered him a contract, immediately loaning him to MGM to star opposite Judy Garland in 1942's For Me and My Gal. At the insistence of producer Arthur Freed, MGM bought out the remainder of Kelly's Selznick contract, and cast him in the 1943 war drama Pilot No. 5.After the musical Du Barry Was a Lady, Kelly appeared in the all-star Thousands Cheer. The Cross of Lorraine, a Resistance drama, quickly followed. MGM then loaned him to Paramount for the Rita Hayworth vehicle Cover Girl and also allowed him to share choreography duties with an up-and-coming Stanley Donen, who continued on as his assistant; the result was a major critical and commercial hit, and while the follow-up, Christmas Holiday, passed by unnoticed, 1945's Anchors Aweigh -- which cast Kelly opposite Frank Sinatra -- earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination, confirming his brilliance as a dancer and choreographer as well as solidifying his increasing power at the box office. In 1944, Kelly had starred in Ziegfield Follies, but the picture did not see the light of day until two years later. In the interim he served in the Navy, and upon returning from duty starred in 1947's Living in a Big Way. For 1948's The Pirate, Kelly teamed with director Vincente Minnelli, followed by a turn as D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers. Next, in the 1948 Rodgers-and-Hart biography Words and Music, he teamed with Vera Ellen for a performance of "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue."In 1949, Kelly and Donen contributed the original story for Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Later that year, the duo was handed the directorial reins for the classic On the Town, a groundbreaking, exuberant adaptation of the Betty Comden/Adolph Green/Leonard Bernstein Broadway smash. Black Hand (a Mafia drama) and Summer Stock (another collaboration with Garland) followed before Kelly reteamed with Minnelli for 1951's masterful An American in Paris, one of the most acclaimed musicals in Hollywood history. In addition to seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, it also earned Kelly a special Oscar in honor of "his versatility as actor, singer, director, and dancer, and specifically for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film." After the stop-gap It's a Big Country, Kelly and Donen mounted 1952's Singin' in the Rain, arguably the most honored and beloved musical in the canon; a tale of Hollywood set as the silent era gave way to the sound era, it represented an unparalleled zenith for the musical comedy genre, and Kelly's centerpiece performance of the title song remains among the most indelible sequences in film. From this peak, however, there was seemingly nowhere else to go but down: Kelly traveled to Europe to qualify for tax exemption, and there shot a lifeless German thriller, The Devil Makes Three. In Britain, he began work on a planned all-ballet project, Invitation to the Dance, but the picture was never completed. Finally shown in its unfinished state in 1956, it received disastrous critical notice. In the U.K., Kelly also starred in Seagulls Over Sorrento before returning stateside for Minnelli's disappointing Brigadoon. Again working with Donen, he co-directed 1955's It's Always Fair Weather. A slight return to form, it performed poorly at the box office, another sign of the impending demise of the Hollywood musical. Kelly also directed and starred in 1957's whimsical The Happy Road, but after headlining George Cukor's Les Girls, MGM told him they had no more musicals planned for production, and he was freed from his contract. A number of independent projects were announced, but none came to fruition. Instead, Kelly starred in 1958's Marjorie Morningstar for Warners and then directed the romantic comedy The Tunnel of Love.In between appearing as a reporter in 1960's Inherit the Wind, Kelly returned to the stage: In 1958, he directed a Broadway production of the musical Flower Drum Song and two years later choreographed a Parisian ballet based on Gershwin's Concerto in F. He also appeared frequently on television, starring in a series based on Going My Way. In 1964, Kelly returned to film, appearing with Shirley MacLaine in What a Way to Go! Two years later, he starred in Jacques Demy's musical homage Les Demoiselles de Rochefort. He also continued directing, most famously 1969's Hello Dolly!, but was largely inactive during the 1970s. In 1980, he starred opposite Olivia Newton-John in the much-maligned Xanadu, but the performance was his last for the big screen. Kelly later starred in a pair of TV miniseries, 1985's North and South and Sins, but then spent his remaining years in retirement, out of the spotlight. Gene Kelly died February 2, 1996, at the age of 83.

Trivia: The sort of performer for whom the term "gaminlike" was coined, Leslie Caron was prepared for a performing career by her American mother, a former dancer. Training from childhood at the Paris Conservatoire, Caron was 16 when she was selected to dance with the Ballet de Champs Elysses. After three years with this prestigious troupe, she was discovered by Gene Kelly, who cast her as the ingénue in his 1951 film An American in Paris. This led to a long-term MGM contract and a string of films in which Caron's dancing and singing skills were showcased to the utmost: Lili (1953), The Glass Slipper (1954), Gaby (1956), and Gigi (1958). During this period, she was loaned out to co-star with Fred Astaire in 20th Century-Fox's Daddy Long Legs (1955), and was seen on the Paris stage in Jean Renoir's Ornet. As musicals slowly went out of fashion, Caron sought to alter her screen image, successfully doing so with her portrayal of a pregnant, unmarried woman awaiting an abortion in The L-Shaped Room (1962), a performance that won her the British Film Academy award (she had previously been nominated for a BFA, and an Oscar, for Lili). Her later film assignments included Father Goose (1965), in which she received an image-shattering slap in the face from Cary Grant; Ken Russell's Valentino (1977), in the role of silent-screen legend Alla Nazimova; and Louis Malle's Damage (1992). The first of Caron's three husbands was George Hormel, of the famous American meat-packing family. Her second marriage was to British director Peter Hall, and husband number three was producer Michael Laughlin, whom she wed in 1969. Though not quite as starry-eyed and apple-cheeked as she was in An American in Paris, Caron has retained her beauty and vivacity into her sixties. Among the many awards and honors bestowed upon Leslie Caron was the title of Jury President at the 1989 Berlin Film Festival.Caron would continue to appear on screen over the coming years, appearing in films like Chocolat and Le Divorce.

Trivia: Oscar Levant's mercurial personality can be summed up by two of his most oft-repeated witticisms: the self-aggrandizing "In some moments I was difficult, in odd moments impossible, in rare moments loathsome, but at my best unapproachably great;" and the self-deprecating "I am the world's oldest child prodigy." The son of a Pittsburgh repairman, Oscar Levant went to New York at 16 to study music under such masters as Stojowski, Schoenberg and Schillinger. Before reaching his 20th birthday, he had gained renown as a concert pianist, teacher, band leader and composer. He played a minor role in the stage play Burlesque, repeating this assignment in the 1929 film version The Dance of Life. During his first visit to Hollywood, Levant befriended George Gershwin; his friendship approached idolatry, and by the mid-1930s Levant was perhaps the greatest interpreter of Gershwin's works in the world. The relationship had a profound effect on Levant's own compositions, as witness his "Rhapsody in Blue"-like score for the 1937 film Nothing Sacred. Not that he was limited to any one musical style: he composed a faux Italian opera, Carnival, for the 1936 "B"-picture Charlie Chan at the Opera. A perceptive musical theorist, Levant often wrote upon the art of composing for films; it was he who coined the phrase "Mickey Mousing," in reference to movie scores that slavishly commented upon the action. The longer he stayed in Hollywood, the more he became famous as a "character" rather than a musician. The public first became aware of Levant's acidic erudition when he began popping up on the Information Please radio program. From 1940 onward, he spent more and more time on-screen as an actor. His most fondly remembered film credits include Humoresque (1945), Rhapsody in Blue (1945), The Barkeleys of Broadway (1949) and O. Henry's Full House (1952), in which he co-starred with Fred Allen in the "Ransom of Red Chief" segment. He was at his best in two classic MGM musicals: An American in Paris (1951), wherein he appears in a dream sequence, playing every member of the orchestra in a performance of Gershwin's "Concerto in F;" and The Band Wagon (1953), in which he and Nanette Fabray play characters patterned on Adolph Green and Betty Comden. While he retained his popularity and circle of friends into the 1960s, Levant's mood swings and increasingly erratic behavior began having professional repercussions. He was nearly banned from television after making a few scatological references concerning a prominent film actress during a 1960 telecast of his LA-based talk show. As time went on, only late-night host Jack Paar would risk having Levant as a guest, and when Paar left TV in 1965, so, for all intents and purposes, did Levant. In and out of rest homes and mental institutions during his last two decades (his final film, 1955's Cobweb, was significantly set in a sanitarium), he became dependent upon pain-killers and other prescription drugs. Despite his deteriorating physical and mental condition, he was able to turn out three superb autobiographical works, A Smattering of Ignorance, The Unimportance of Being Oscar and The Memoirs of an Amnesiac. Oscar Levant died of a heart attack in 1972 at the age of 66.

Trivia: Blonde, ice cool, and sophisticated actress Nina Foch has worked steadily in feature films and television since making her film debut in Return of the Vampire (1943). As a contracted starlet for Columbia Pictures, Foch spent several years appearing in many B-films before she was able to prove herself ready for bigger fare. Born to Dutch conductor/composer Dirk Fock and an American chorine/WWI-era pin-up girl, Foch was born in Holland but raised in Manhattan. Before enrolling in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts to study acting, she had briefly been a concert pianist and an amateur painter. As an actress, Foch gained experience with local theater and touring companies until signing with Columbia in 1943. In 1947, Foch made the first of many forays on Broadway. By the early '50s, she was being cast in secondary but better roles in such films as An American in Paris (1951) and Scaramouche (1952). In 1954, Foch appeared in Executive Suite for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. But for a few television appearances and some stage work, Foch took a respite from acting in 1960 that lasted over ten years. She made a comeback in Such Good Friends (1971) and continued to appear sporadically in films as a character actress. Foch also worked steadily in television, was a respected drama coach in Hollywood, and taught at UCLA's School of Cinematic Arts for 40 years before her death in late 2008.

Trivia: Many research sources arbitrarily begin the list of French actor Eugene Borden's films in 1936. In fact, Borden first showed up on screen as early as 1917. Seldom afforded billing, the actor was nonetheless instantly recognizable in his many appearances as headwaiters, porters, pursers and coachmen. Along with several other stalwart European character actors, Borden was cast in a sizeable role in the above-average Columbia "B" So Dark the Night (1946). Musical buffs will recall Eugene Borden as Gene Kelly and Oscar Levant's landlord in An American in Paris (1951).

Trivia: Belgian actress Ann Codee toured American vaudeville in the 'teens and twenties in a comedy act with her husband, American-born Frank Orth. The team made its film debut in 1929, appearing in a series of multilingual movie shorts. Thereafter, both Codee and Orth flourished as Hollywood character actors. Codee was seen in dozens of films as florists, music teachers, landladies, governesses and grandmothers. She played a variety of ethnic types, from the very French Mme. Poullard in Jezebel (1938) to the Teutonic Tante Berthe in The Mummy's Curse (1961). Ann Codee's last film appearance was as a tight-corseted committeewoman in Can-Can (1960).

Trivia: In films from 1919, Dutch vaudeville comic George Davis played one of the featured clowns in Lon Chaney's He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and was also in Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. that same year. In the sound era, Davis specialized in playing waiters but would also turn up as bus drivers, counter men, and circus performers, often assuming a French accent. When told that Davis' business as a hotel porter included carrying Greta Garbo's bags, the soviet envoy opined: "That's no business. That's social injustice." "Depends on the tip," replied Davis. He continued to play often humorous bits well into the '50s, appearing in such television shows as Cisco Kid and Perry Mason. The veteran performer died of cancer at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital.

Trivia: An alumnus of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Brooklyn-born Hayden Rorke became a member of the original Walter Hampden theatrical company in the early '30s (he ended up the last surviving member of that hardy troupe). While serving in WWII, Rorke appeared in both the road company and film versions of the all-serviceman musical This Is the Army. He would make 70 Broadway appearances in his career, in additional to some 50 films and nearly 400 TV shows. Though usually unbilled, Rorke was instantly recognizable in roles calling for erudition and urbanity, notably in such films as An American in Paris (1951) and The Robe (1953). Among his many TV assignments was the role of CBS radio announcer John Daly (though his character was not identified by name) in the Pearl Harbor episode of the CBS historical series You Are There; he also co-starred in the two-part pilot for an intriguing 1951 science fiction series Project Moonbase, which didn't make it as a series but was released as a theatrical feature. Still essaying small movie roles into the 1960s, Hayden Rorke finally achieved a fame (and generous screen time) in the continuing role of flustered air force psychiatrist Dr. Bellows on the fanciful TV sitcom I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970).

Trivia: Corpulent, booming-voiced actor Paul Maxey, in films from 1941, was given sizeable roles (in every sense of the word) in such "B" pictures as Sky Dragon (1949) and The Narrow Margin (1952), often cast as an obstreperous villain. After appearing as composer Victor Herbert in MGM's Jerome Kern biopic Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), he was kept "on call" at MGM for uncredited character parts in such major productions as An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and It's Always Fair Weather (1955). Active until 1962, Paul Maxey is best-remembered by 1950s TV addicts as the irascible Mayor Peoples on the Jackie Cooper sit-com The People's Choice (1955-58).

Trivia: American actor Dick Wessel had a face like a Mack Truck bulldog and a screen personality to match. After several years on stage, Wessel began showing up in Hollywood extra roles around 1933; he is fleetingly visible in the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933), Laurel and Hardy's Bonnie Scotland (1935), and the Columbia "screwball" comedy She Couldn't Take It (1935). The size of his roles increased in the '40s; perhaps his best feature-film showing was as the eponymous bald-domed master criminal in Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946). He was a valuable member of Columbia Pictures' short subject stock company, playing a variety of bank robbers, wrestlers, jealous husbands and lazy brother-in-laws. Among his more memorable 2-reel appearances were as lovestruck boxer "Chopper" in The Three Stooges' Fright Night (1947), Andy Clyde's invention-happy brother-in-law in Eight Ball Andy (1948), and Hugh Herbert's overly sensitive strongman neighbor in Hot Heir (1947). Wessel was shown to good (if unbilled) advantage as a handlebar-mustached railroad engineer in the superspectacular Around the World in 80 Days (1956), and had a regular role as Carney on the 1959 TV adventure series Riverboat. Dick Wessel's farewell screen appearance was as a harried delivery man in Disney's The Ugly Dachshund (1965).

Trivia: French singer Georges Guetary is best-known by American audiences for having performed several unforgettable song and dance sequences alongside Gene Kelly and Oscar Levant in American in Paris (1951). In the Oscar-winning film, Guetary played Henri, the popular French singer who provided the third apex in the love triangle involving Kelly and love interest Leslie Caron. His two most memorable sequences in the Oscar-winning film came when he sang George and Ira Gershwin's "'SWonderful" and when, dressed in top hat and tails, he performed "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" atop a spectacular lighted staircase. Guetary made his film debut in The Black Cavalier (1949). Much of his career was spent on television and stage. Guetary died of heart failure at the age of 82.

Trivia: One of the most popular light leading men at the advent of sound, Robert Ames starred opposite Marion Davies in Marianne (1929). But when Cosmopolitan Pictures, Davies' production company, decided to release a sound version, Ames found himself replaced by Cliff Edwards, whose ukulele was all over the place in those hectic days. Ames, who had starred on Broadway prior to his screen debut in What Women Want (1920), was equally noted for a restless private life, marrying and divorcing actresses Frances Goodrich, Vivienne Segal, and Muriel Oakes. He committed suicide in 1931.

Trivia: Lean, lightly mustached general purpose actor John Eldredge came to films after several successful seasons with the New York Civic Repertory. Signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1934, Eldredge became a handy man to have around whenever the script called for a weakling or cad. He played Bette Davis' good-for-nothing husband in Dangerous (1935), and later offered a variation of the theme as Joan Leslie's callow beau in High Sierra (1941). Only rarely, as in Oil for the Lamps of China (1935), was he permitted to play a character with substance and intestinal fortitude. Even after the expiration of his Warners contract, he specialized in such namby-pamby characterizations as Walter W. Walker III in Columbia's Eve Knew Her Apples (1944). As he grew older and grayer, Eldredge's characters often assumed a weary dignity; one of his more rewarding later assignments was the part of Captain Collins in the sci-fi "sleeper" I Married a Monster From Outer Space (1958). A busy TV performer in the 1950s, Eldredge could be seen playing slimy villains in virtually every other cop or adventure series of the era; on a more respectable note, he played the heroine's father in the 1954 syndicated sitcom Meet Corliss Archer. John Eldredge is one of the few character actors of Hollywood's Golden Era to be afforded his own Internet website, which can be found under the heading "The Man Without Qualities."

Trivia: Diminutive, baby-faced actress Noel Neill entered films as a Paramount starlet in 1942. Though she was showcased in one of the musical numbers in The Fleet's In (1944) and was starred in the Oscar-nominated Technicolor short College Queen (1945), most of her Paramount assignments were thankless bit parts. She fared better as one of the leads in Monogram's Teen Agers series of the mid- to late '40s. In 1948 she was cast as intrepid girl reporter Lois Lane in the Columbia serial The Adventures of Superman, repeating the role in the 1950 chapter play Atom Man vs. Superman. At the time, she regarded it as just another freelance job, perhaps a little better than her cameos in such features as An American in Paris (in 1951 as the American art student) and DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1953). But someone was impressed by Neill's appealingly vulnerable interpretation of Lois Lane, and in 1953 she was hired to replace Phyllis Coates as Lois in the TV version of Superman. She remained with the series for 78 episodes, gaining an enormous fan following (consisting primarily of ten-year-old boys) if not a commensurately enormous bank account. Retiring to private life after the cancellation of Superman in 1958, she was brought back into the limelight during the nostalgia craze of the 1970s. She made countless lecture appearances on the college and film convention circuit, and in 1978 returned to films as Lois Lane's mother in the big-budget Superman: The Movie: alas, most of her part ended up on the cutting-room floor, and neither she nor fellow Adventures of Superman alumnus Kirk Alyn received billing. Noel Neill's last TV appearance to date was a guest spot in a 1991 episode of the syndicated The Adventures of Superboy; she made a cameo appearance in 2006's Superman Returns. Neill died in 2016, at age 95.

Trivia: Born in Sweden, actress Anna Q. Nilsson was lured to the U.S. as a teenager by dreams of luxury and creature comforts. Her first job was as a nursemaid, but Anna learned English quickly and was able to advance herself professionally. Her striking Nordic beauty made her a much sought-after commercial model; one of the photographers with whom Nillson worked suggested that the girl was pretty enough for motion pictures, and recommended her for a one-reel epic titled Molly Pitcher (1913). She worked her way up to stardom, and her career might have continued unabated had not Nillson been seriously injured in 1925 when, while riding a horse, she was thrown against a stone wall. Nillson was an invalid for one whole year, working arduously with therapists and specialists in Sweden and Vienna until she was finally able to walk without aid. One of Nillson's comeback films was The Babe Comes Home (1927), in which she worked like a Spartan to give her own performance while trying to make baseball star Babe Ruth look good. When talking pictures came in, Nillson, whose career had been faltering since her accident, gave up films to concentrate on charity work. Occasionally she'd accept featured or bit roles, though few are worth mentioning except for her appearance as one of the silent-star "waxworks" - including Buster Keaton and H.B. Warner - in the 1950 film drama Sunset Boulevard. Anna Q. Nilsson retired in 1963 to Sun City, California.

Trivia: In the eyes of many film-buffs, actor Maurice Chevalier, with his sophisticated charm, zest for life, and wit, is the consummate movie Frenchman. Chevalier, born in Paris, was the youngest of nine children. His father was a house painter and did not work steadily. To help out, the 11-year-old Chevalier quit school to work as an apprentice engraver and a factory worker. After performing briefly as an acrobat, he was injured and unable to continue his acrobatics so began singing in Paris cafes and halls. It is odd that he should turn to music as Chevalier had a notoriously weak, and average singing voice; to compensate, he added a touch of comedy to his act and soon became the toast of the town. Though only 21, he got his biggest break when he became the revue partner of the infamous musical star Mistinguett in the Folies-Bergere. Soon she became his lover as well. While serving in World War I, Chevalier was captured and spent two years in a POW camp; later he was awarded a Croix de Guerre. After the war he rose to world fame as a star of music halls. His trademarks were his boulevardier outfit of a straw hat and bow tie, his suggestive swagger, and his aura of Epicurean enjoyment. Having appeared in a number of silent films, he moved to Hollywood in 1929 and was popular with American audiences as the light-hearted, sophisticated star of romantic films. He left Hollywood in 1935, but continued making movies elsewhere. In 1938 he was decorated a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. In 1951 he was refused re-entry to the United States because he had signed an anti-nuclear-weapons document, the "Stockholm Appeal." In 1958 he was allowed to return to Hollywood and receive a special Oscar "for his contributions to the world of entertainment for more than half a century."

Trivia: Born Louis Gendre in Marseille, France in 1921, Louis Jourdan (his mother's maiden name) was Hollywood's go-to Frenchman for the majority of his career, which spanned over five decades. He trained as an actor with Rene Simon at the Ecole Dramatique and made his onscreen debut in 1939, going on to play cultivated, polished, dashing lead roles in a number of French romantic comedies and dramas. After his father was arrested by the Gestapo, Louis and his two brothers joined the French underground; his film career came to a halt when he refused to act in Nazi propaganda films. In 1948 David O. Selznick invited him to Hollywood to appear in The Paradine Case (1948); he remained in the U.S. and went on to star in a number of Hollywood films. Jourdan quickly followed The Paradine Case with Letter From an Unknown Woman, opposite Joan Fontaine and a supporting role in Madame Bovary, directed by Vincente Minnelli. He continued to work in both France and Hollywood, often playing the French playboys. In 1958, he reteamed with Minnelli to play Gaston in the musical Gigi, opposite Leslie Caron, and got to showcase his singing voice in the film.He spent a significant part of his career filming adaptations of Alexandre Dumas works. He played the title character in The Count of Monte Cristo (1961) and later played the villain, De Villefort, in a TV movie of the same story, followed by a turn as D'Artagnan in The Man in the Iron Mask (1977). In 1983, he played a Bond villain, Kamal Khan, in Octopussy. Jourdan slowed his film output by the late 1980s, and made his last film, Year of the Comet, in 1992. He died in 2015, at age 93.

Trivia: On stage from the age of 10 (in a production of Pinkie and the Fairies), British actress Hermione Gingold studied for her craft under famed instructor Rosinna Filippi. Gingold's subsequent stage career was almost exclusively devoted to the classics, particularly Shakespeare. Nearing 40, Gingold switched professional gears to become a singing comedienne, appearing in such West End revues as Sweet and Low, Sweeter and Lower and Sweetest and Lowest. Appearing on Broadway in the 1952 edition of John Murray Anderson's Almanac, Gingold held off making any American films (though she'd been in British pictures since 1934), until she was flattered by produced Mike Todd into playing a cameo role as a London tart in Todd's cinema spectacular Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Delightfully inhibited and doggedly aristocratic all at once, Gingold continued her U.S. film career in a number of eccentric roles; in Gigi (1958), she shared the poignant song "I Remember it Well" with Maurice Chevalier. The actress also blessed American TV with her talents; in a 1960 Mother's Day special she portrayed the mother of The Three Stooges! Gracing such films as Bell, Book and Candle (1962), The Music Man (1962) and even Munster Go Home (1965) with her regally ribald presence, Hermione Gingold was still at her post in the '70s, as sparkling as ever in the otherwise forgettable A Little Night Music (1976).

Trivia: Best known as the Gabor sister with talent, actress Eva Gabor began her career as a cabaret singer and ice skater in her native Hungary. Forced to emigrate to the U.S. at the outbreak of World War II, Gabor was able to secure film work in mystery-woman parts in such films as Forced Landing and Pacific Blackout (both 1941). The actress didn't truly achieve star stature until her Broadway appearance in The Happy Time (1950), though, curiously, she wasn't called upon to appear in the 1952 film version. Gabor's movie career, in fact, remained rooted in supporting roles, such as one of Vincent Price's victims in The Mad Magician (1954) and as Liane d'Exelmans in the Oscar-winning Gigi (1958). Like her sister Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eva has accrued plenty of press coverage thanks to her multiple marriages, but, unlike Zsa Zsa, Gabor has managed to stay off the police blotter -- except for a 1964 incident in which she was nearly killed fighting off a couple of vicious diamond robbers. Gabor's best-loved public appearances were manifested in her five-year run as Lisa Douglas on the popular TV sitcom Green Acres (1965-1970). Contrary to the Gabor Sisters' image of contentiousness, Eva was well liked on the Green Acres set by both co-star Eddie Albert and director Richard Bare, who had nothing but praise for her professionalism and comic timing. Gabor proved she hadn't lost her touch in 1990 when the inevitable Green Acres two-hour revival movie made its way to television. She died in 1995.