Trivia: In tandem with John Lennon, musician Paul McCartney is responsible for composing most of the songs in the nine-year history of the Beatles. While still a member of the group, McCartney wrote the score for the 1966 film The Family Way; it would be his last solo gig until the Beatles' breakup in 1970. So prolific and popular was McCartney in his post-Beatles years that it became a standard joke amongst post-postwar kids to query "You mean that Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?" Also grist for the humor mill was McCartney's incredible wealth; his legal ownership of virtually every song ever written (including such state anthems as "On Wisconsin"); and the strict vegetarian edicts of his wife and business partner Linda Eastman McCartney. Paul McCartney has also kept active in the film world, penning the theme for the 1973 James Bond flick Live And Let Die, and producing, scoring and acting in the 1984 vanity project Give My Regards to Broad Street, in which viewers were offered the unlikely premise that McCartney would face bankruptcy if he didn't locate a lost record album.

Trivia: There are few details of the short life of musical genius John Lennon that haven't been virtually memorized by his disciples. A bare-bones precis of his existence would include his Liverpool childhood, his formation of the Quarrymen, aka the Silver Beatles aka the Beatles in 1961, the world-wide fame, the drug-and-religion experimentation, the controversial alignment with Yoko Ono, the 1970 Beatles breakup, the five-year retirement (1975-80) to raise son Sean, and his senseless murder outside New York's Hotel Dakota in December of 1980. Lennon's film career, though but one small aspect of his creative energies, is worth a brief recap. First there were the films with his fellow Beatles: A Hard Day's Night (64), Help (65) (in which for two delicious seconds Lennon shamelessly plugs his recently published book of doggerel In His Own Write), Yellow Submarine (67) (that's Lance Percival doing his speaking voice, but that's Lennon in the vocals), Magical Mystery Tour (69) and Let It Be (70). There was Lennon's one-and-only solo acting assignment as a bespectacled British Tommy in How I Won The War (68) -- in which, as he watches his guts spill out of his body, he turns to the camera and says ominously "I knew this would happen. Didn't you?" There were the oddball, home-movielike projects, made with his friends and with Yoko Ono, of which Bottoms (an engaging if pointless study of the human derriere) is the most entertaining. And, best of all, there was the posthumous, lovingly assembled Imagine: John Lennon (88), including the famous 1969 anti-war "Bed-In," the TV confrontation with ultraconservative cartoonist Al Capp, never before seen footage of Lennon at home and at work, and of course several plaintive renditions of the title song.

Trivia: Fresh from a nondescript Liverpudlian musical group known as Rory Storme and the Hurricanes, Ringo Starr made the quantum leap to superstardom in 1962 when he replaced Pete Best as drummer for the burgeoning Beatles. Starr was regarded by many music aficionados as the least creative of the foursome, though he may well have enjoyed the largest fan following -- especially among young ladies who felt the urge to "mother" the diminutive Mr. Starr (though he appeared to be the baby of the group, Ringo was in fact the oldest of the Fab Four). In the Beatles' first two films, A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965), most of the comedy material went to Ringo, whose Chaplinesque demeanor and droll, deadpan dialogue delivery paid off in big laughs. Upon the group's breakup in 1970, it was Ringo who fared best as a solo screen actor. He had already brightened up the dull proceedings of Candy (1968) and The Magic Christian (1970); after the Beatles' split, he was seen to good advantage as the Pope in Ken Russell's Lisztomania (1975), as one of Mae West's bewildered amours in Sextette (1978) and as a bumbling Cro-Magnon in Caveman (1979), in which he co-starred with his second wife, Barbara Bach. In 1973, Ringo produced the bizarre horror movie spoof Son of Dracula, appearing onscreen with fellow rock icon Harry Nilsson. A big draw all over again in the 1980s thanks to his All-Star Band tours, Ringo Starr remains a most welcome, if infrequent TV guest star; he has also shown up in several entertaining commercials, including a 1995 Pizza Hut spot in which he co-starred with ex-Monkees Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, and Peter Tork. Ringo continued to record music and often appeared in music documentaries, not all of which were about the Beatles. He made memorable contributions to both Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)? as well as George Harrison: Living In the Material World.

Trivia: Liverpudlian George Harrison, lead guitarist of the Beatles, was the youngest and, for many years, least appreciated of the Fab Four. Often labelled the "quiet Beatle" in the early 1960s, Harrison seemed so retiring and self-deprecating that the makers of the first Beatles flick A Hard Day's Night took pity on him and wrote him his own individual sequence. The result was the hilarious "shirt scene," wherein Harrison finds himself auditioning for a specious teen-oriented TV show (asked his opinion on some wretched "mod" clothing, Harrison replies "They're grotty.") For the next Beatles film Help (65), Harrison broke the Lennon-McCartney stranglehold on the musical score by writing the song "I Need You" -- a fact that we hear proclaimed over and over during the film's closing credits. While overwhelmed in the public eye by the charisma of his fellow Beatles, Harrison was the first to assert himself as an individual musical artist, recording the 1968 solo album Wonderwall Music while still a member of the group. After the breakup of the Beatles in 1970, Harrison was also the first of the four to make the charts with a hit song; on a more negative note, he was also the first to be involved in a serious lawsuit -- the plagiarism battle over "He's So Fine," which he eventually lost. Not having appeared in a film since 1974's Concert for Bangladesh, Harrison re-entered the movie business in the late 1970s as a producer, backing such films as Monty Python's Life of Brian (79), Time Bandits (82) and Brazil (84). He also occasionally played small, uncredited roles in such films as Shanghai Surprise (86) (for which he also contributed several songs). One of George Harrison's most ingratiating post-Beatles appearance was as a BBC announcer on the parody TV documentary The Rutles -- a merciless lampoon of a certain mop-topped foursome of the 1960s.

Trivia: A member in good standing of Dublin's Abbey Theatre in the 1920s, Irish-born Wilfred Brambell began appearing on the London stage in the early 1930s, making his cinematic bow in Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. His latter-day fame rests on two roles essayed in the 1960s. On the popular British sitcom Steptoe and Son, the precursor to Norman Lear's Sanford and Son, Brambell played the crabby junk dealer who served as the model for Redd Foxx's Fred Sanford. And in the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964), Brambell gummed up the plot proceedings as Paul McCartney's "clean old man" grandfather. One of Wilfrid Brambell's last roles was as Alice B. Toklas in the iconoclastic Swedish "biopic" The Adventures of Picasso (1980).

Trivia: A small British character actor, onscreen from the '50s, he often played comedic working class types.

Trivia: Actor Kenneth Haigh received his preliminary training at that cradle of top British talent, the Central School of Speech and Drama. Haigh's first professional job was in a 1952 Irish stage production. He joined the vanguard of Britain's "angry young man" movement when he originated the role of Jimmy Porter in both the London and Broadway productions of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. He remained in the Jimmy Porter mode in most of his film appearances: exceptions included the part of Brutus in the mammoth 1963 version of Cleopatra and his hilarious uncredited cameo as a supercilious TV producer in the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964). Kenneth Haigh's television credits include the British TV series Man at the Top (1971-75), a spin-off of the 1959 film Room at the Top, and the role of Sir Richard Burton in the internationally distributed miniseries Search for the Nile (1972).

Trivia: British character actor Richard Vernon specialized in playing dignified, stiff upper-lipped nobles, military officers, and patriarchs in a wide variety of films and television programs. Though he had an uncredited bit part in Indiscreet (1958), Vernon did not make his formal film debut until he played Sir Edgar Hargreaves in Village of the Damned (1960).

Trivia: Onscreen from 1948 through the mid-late 1980s, solemn-faced Marianne Stone probably appeared in more films than any other British actress her age. Though she had a few major roles early on, Stone quickly settled into featured parts and bits, often unbilled. She was equally adept at playing lower-class housewives, harpies, officious shop clerks, and ritzy society reporters, and is particularly remembered for her portrayal of Vivian Dankbloom in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962). Stone was married to London show-business columnist Peter Noble.

Trivia: British actor David Langton is perhaps best remembered for playing Lord Bellamy on the long-running, British television series Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-1976). The distinguished leading and supporting actor appeared in numerous films and frequently guest starred on television shows such as The Avengers. Born Basil Muir Langton-Dodds in Motherwell, Scotland, he started out on stage in the early '30s. By the end of WWII, Langton began winning leading roles. In 1955, he began a sporadic film career, with The Ship That Died of Shame. His subsequent film credits include Saint Joan (1957), the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964), and The Liquidator (1966). In addition to appearing in television series, Langton also worked occasionally in made-for-TV films, such as Winston Churchill -- The Wilderness Years and Charles and Diana: A Royal Love Story (1982).

Trivia: British actor Michael Trubshawe played character and cameo roles in a number of films. He was a close army buddy of actor David Niven. To pay tribute to his friend, Niven made sure that Trubshawe's name was mentioned in every film he made after 1938. In 1970, Trubshawe retired from films.

Trivia: Founded in Liverpool during the late '50s by guitarists John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison, with drummer Pete Best and Stu Sutcliffe on bass, the Beatles were initially a skiffle band, playing a British variation of American folk music. The band -- which went under several names before arriving at the Beatles -- incorporated numerous American rock & roll, rhythm & blues, and pop music influences in their playing and songwriting, most notably the sounds of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Arthur Alexander. By the early '60s, they had developed significant popularity in Hamburg, Germany, where dozens of Liverpool bands were booked into local clubs, and this soon translated into success in their hometown, where the band's mixture of solid American rock & roll and careful music articulation made them stand out from the rest of the city's music scene. Sutcliffe left the band in 1961 and McCartney took over on bass. After finding their manager Brian Epstein -- who got them an audition with George Martin, the head of EMI Records' tiny Parlophone label -- the band was signed to a recording contract in 1962. Ringo Starr replaced Best on drums soon thereafter, and the group's lineup was set.By the spring of 1963, the Beatles' singles and albums were breaking sales records in England, and they were officially introduced to America in February 1964 with an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show followed by a whirlwind tour. The group had been signed the year before to do a movie, and, through a stroke of good luck, they were turned over to producer Walter Shenson, director Richard Lester, and screenwriter Alun Owen, who together created A Hard Day's Night, probably the best rock & roll movie ever made. This film, a black-and-white, documentary-style, fictionalized account of the fishbowl lives that the Beatles were leading during the first wave of Beatlemania, was popular with parents as well as their teenage children, and critics loved it, too. (Andrew Sarris called it "the Citizen Kane of jukebox movies.") The mix of the four personalities -- Starr's honest, earthy, clownish presence; Harrison's cutting, funny personality; McCartney's pleasant, engaging presence; and Lennon's snide, sarcastic wit -- won over audiences around the world. The band's follow-up movie, Help! was made on a much bigger budget and in color, but it failed to repeat A Hard Day's Night's success, suffering from an unfocused script and a good, but not great, selection of songs. The group was generally as unhappy with the results as everyone else, although the film did make money and have some entertaining moments. The Beatles tried directing and producing their own television film, 1967's Magical Mystery Tour, but the result -- outside of a couple of scenes and a handful of good songs -- were amateurish. In 1968, they provided the songs for the psychedelic animated feature Yellow Submarine, and made a brief onscreen appearance at the movie's conclusion. The divisions that would eventually lead to the group's break-up were chronicled in the 1969 documentary Let It Be, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, with impressive results. The Beatles' exposure to movie-making whetted their appetites for filmmaking on a variety of levels. Lennon had an acting role in Richard Lester's anti-war satire How I Won the War, while McCartney wrote the score for the John and Roy Boulting comedy The Family Way. Meanwhile, Starr acted in the film Candy, while Harrison produced the soundtrack to the Indian movie Wonderwall. During the late '60s and early '70s, the Beatles' corporate entity, Apple, acquired the distribution rights to various movies, including El Topo and La Grande Bouffe, and made a number of films, most notably Born to Boogie, directed and produced by Starr, and The Concert for Bangladesh, co-produced by Harrison. Starr also took an occasional acting role, most notably in the David Puttnam-produced period drama That'll Be the Day. McCartney also composed and performed the title song for the 1973 James Bond movie Live and Let Die, but it was ultimately Harrison who became the most active of the Beatles in filmmaking. Through his company Handmade Films, he helped produce such hit pictures as Monty Python's Life of Brian and the fantasy Time Bandits. The end of the '70s also saw the lingering mystique of the Beatles parodied by Monty Python alumnus Eric Idle and Bonzo Dog Band-founder Neil Innes in the film The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, in which Harrison made a cameo.

Trivia: Born to an Italian father and Welsh mother, actor/writer/director Victor Spinetti attended the College of Music and Drama at Cardiff. Following his debut at a 1953 concert party in Wales, Spinetti built up a solid reputation as a surefire laugh-getter in various theatrical revues and West End plays. In 1964, he won a Tony Award for his interpretation of the Drill Sergeant Major (his favorite part) in the London/Broadway musical hit Oh, What a Lovely War! That same year, Spinetti made an auspicious film bow as the neurotic TV director in The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. Even funnier was his portrayal of mad scientist Doctor Foot ("With a ring like that I can--dare I say it?--rule the world...with the proper government grant") in the Fab Four's follow-up feature Help! Spinetti's association with the Beatles extended to his theatrical work when, in 1969, he adapted and directed a stage version of John Lennon's book In His Own Write. Other films blessed with Spinetti's presence include Taming of the Shrew (1967), Start the Revolution Without Me (1970), Under a Cherry Moon (1986) and The Krays (1990). In addition to his many theatrical directing assignments, Spinetti has kept busy as a cartoon voiceover artist for such projects as the droll TV weekly Superted. When asked in 1980 if he had any hobbies, Victor Spinetti listed "Writing, talking and occasionally listening."

Trivia: Susan Hampshire was an actress from childhood, but stardom eluded her until she played a colorful one-scene bit in the 1958 London stage production Expresso Bongo. Hampshire was not cast in the 1959 film version of this play, but instead made her "official" starring film debut (after a couple of earlier bit parts) in the class-conscious comedy Upstairs and Downstairs (1959). She endeared herself to American audiences with her performance in Disney's Three Lives of Thomasina (1963) then went out of her way to avoid being typecast in kiddie-movie parts by playing the scantily clad lady friend of Albert Finney in Night Must Fall (1964). Two years later, she was seen as the completely un clad leading lady in the French Paris in the Month of August (1966), directed by her future husband Pierre Granier-Deferre. With her portrayal of Agnes Wakefield in the all-star 1969 television adaptation of David Copperfield, Hampshire established herself as one of the business TV miniseries performers in the English-speaking world. Her performances as Fleur Forsythe in the internationally popular The Forsythe Saga (1967), Sarah Churchill in The First Churchills (1970) and Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair (1972) won her accolades from all over the globe, including three American Emmy awards. She also starred as Lady Glencora Palliser in the 22-episode adaptation of Anthony Trollope's The Pallisers (telecast in the U.S. in 1977). Though she breezes through archaic classical dialogue with seeming effortlessness, Susan Hampshire has been a lifelong dyslexic, a fact she elaborates upon in her 1982 book Susan's Story.

Trivia: British supporting actor Jeremy Lloyd appeared in numerous lightweight features during the '60s and '70s. He typically played the stereotypical stiff-upper-lipped English chap. Later in his career Lloyd turned to screenwriting.

Trivia: American supporting or character actress, onscreen from the '50s.