Trivia: Given that Fred MacMurray built a successful film career as the quintessential nice guy, it's rather ironic that some of his strongest and best-remembered performances cast him against type. While remaining known as a fixture of light comedies and live-action Disney productions, his definitive roles nonetheless were those which found him contemplating murder, adultery, and other villainous pursuits. Born August 30, 1908, in Kankakee, IL, MacMurray, the son of a concert violinist, was educated at a military academy and later studied at the Chicago Art Institute. His original goal was to become a professional saxophonist, and toward that aim he worked with a variety of bands and even recorded with Gus Arnheim. MacMurray's musical aspirations eventually led him to Hollywood, where he frequently worked as an extra. He later joined the California Collegians and with them played Broadway in the 1930 revue Three's a Crowd, where he joined Libby Holman on a duet of "Something to Remember Me By." He subsequently appeared in productions of The Third Little Show and Roberta. The story behind MacMurray's return to Hollywood remains uncertain -- either a Paramount casting scout saw him on-stage, or he simply signed up with Central Casting -- but either way, he was under contract by 1934. At Paramount, he rose to fame in 1935's The Gilded Lily, a romantic comedy which pit him against Claudette Colbert. Seemingly overnight he was among the hottest young actors in town, and he quickly emerged as a favorite romantic sparring partner with many of Hollywood's leading actresses. After Katherine Hepburn requested his services for Alice Adams, MacMurray joined Carole Lombard in Hands Across the Table before reuniting with Colbert in The Bride Comes Home, his seventh film in 12 months. He kept up the frenetic pace, appearing in 1936's The Trail of the Lonesome Pine alongside Henry Fonda, reteaming with Lombard in The Princess Comes Across. After settling a contract dispute with Paramount, MacMurray again starred with Colbert in the 1937 swashbuckler Maid of Salem, one of the first films to move him away from the laid-back, genial performances on which he'd risen to success.Along with Colbert, Lombard remained the actress with whom MacMurray was most frequently paired. They reunited in 1937's Swing High, Swing Low and again that same year in True Confession. After starring with Bing Crosby in Sing You Sinners, he also began another onscreen partnership with Madeleine Carroll in 1939's Cafe Society, quickly followed by a reunion in Invitation to Bali. While not the superstar that many predicted he would become, by the 1940s MacMurray had settled comfortably into his leading man duties, developing an amiable comic style perfectly suited to his pictures' sunny tone. While occasionally appearing in a more dramatic capacity, as in the Barbara Stanwyck drama Remember the Night, the majority of his pictures remained light, breezy affairs. However, in 1944 he and Stanwyck reunited in Billy Wilder's superb Double Indemnity, which cast MacMurray as a murderous insurance salesman. The result was perhaps the most acclaimed performance of his career, earning him new respect as a serious actor.However, MacMurray soon returned to more comedic fare, appearing with Colbert in 1944's Practically Yours. After the following year's farcical Murder He Says, his contract with Paramount ended and he moved to 20th Century Fox, where he starred in the historical musical Where Do We Go From Here? His co-star, June Haver, became his wife in 1954. MacMurray then produced and starred in Pardon My Past, but after announcing his displeasure with Fox he jumped to Universal to star in the 1947 hit The Egg and I. During the 1940s and early '50s, he settled into a string of easygoing comedies, few of them successful either financially or artistically. His star began to wane, a situation not helped by a number of poor career choices; in 1950, he even turned down Wilder's classic Sunset Boulevard. In 1954, however, MacMurray returned to form in The Caine Mutiny, where he appeared as a duplicitous naval officer. As before, cast against type he garnered some of the best notices of his career, but this time he continued the trend by starring as a dirty cop in The Pushover. Despite recent critical acclaim, MacMurray's box-office clout remained diminished, and throughout the mid-'50s he appeared primarily in low-budget action pictures, most of them Westerns. In 1959, however, he was tapped by Walt Disney to star in the live-action comedy The Shaggy Dog, which became one of the year's biggest hits. MacMurray appeared as a callous adulterer in Wilder's Oscar-winning 1960 smash The Apartment before moving to television to star in the family sitcom My Three Sons; a tremendous success, it ran until 1972. He then returned to the Disney stable to essay the title role in 1961's The Absent-Minded Professor and remained there for the following year's Bon Voyage and 1963's Son of Flubber. However, after two more Disney features -- 1966's Follow Me Boys and 1967's The Happiest Millionaire -- both flopped, MacMurray remained absent from the big screen for the rest of the decade, and only resurfaced in 1973 in Disney's Charley and the Angel. After a pair of TV movies, MacMurray made one last feature, 1978's The Swarm, before retiring. He died in Santa Monica, CA, on November 5, 1991.

Trivia: Actor Tim Considine is the son of British-born film producer John W. Considine and theater-chain heiress Carmen Pantages. Tim's brother John was likewise an actor, and his uncle was newspaper columnist Bob Considine. He launched his film career at age 12, playing Red Skelton's son in The Clown (1953). Briefly signed with Disney in the mid-'50s, he co-starred in the "Spin and Marty" and "Hardy Boys" components of The Mickey Mouse Club. The young actor had a particularly good year in 1960, playing James Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello and launching a five-year run as Mike Douglas on the TV sitcom My Three Sons, co-starring fellow Disney alumni Fred MacMurray (with whom Tim had appeared in 1959's The Shaggy Dog) and Don Grady. Five years after leaving My Three Sons, Tim played his most famous -- and briefest -- screen role: the bedridden soldier slapped by George C. Scott in Patton (1970). At last report, Tim Considine was a high-priced Beverly Hills photographer.

Trivia: Famed for his ratchety voice and cold-fish stare, William Demarest was an "old pro" even when he was a young pro. He began his stage career at age 13, holding down a variety of colorful jobs (including professional boxer) during the off-season. After years in carnivals and as a vaudeville headliner, Demarest starred in such Broadway long-runners as Earl Carroll's Sketch Book. He was signed with Warner Bros. pictures in 1926, where he was briefly paired with Clyde Cook as a "Mutt and Jeff"-style comedy team. Demarest's late-silent and early-talkie roles varied in size, becoming more consistently substantial in the late 1930s. His specialty during this period was a bone-crushing pratfall, a physical feat he was able to perform into his 60s. While at Paramount in the 1940s, Demarest was a special favorite of writer/director Preston Sturges, who cast Demarest in virtually all his films: The Great McGinty (1940); Christmas in July (1940); The Lady Eve (1941); Sullivan's Travels (1942); The Palm Beach Story (1942); Hail the Conquering Hero (1944); Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), wherein Demarest was at his bombastic best as Officer Kockenlocker; and The Great Moment (1944). For his role as Al Jolson's fictional mentor Steve Martin in The Jolson Story (1946), Demarest was Oscar-nominated (the actor had, incidentally, appeared with Jolie in 1927's The Jazz Singer). Demarest continued appearing in films until 1975, whenever his increasingly heavy TV schedule would allow. Many Demarest fans assumed that his role as Uncle Charlie in My Three Sons (66-72) was his first regular TV work: in truth, Demarest had previously starred in the short-lived 1960 sitcom Love and Marriage.

Trivia: The daughter of Sheila and Gordon MacRae, actress/singer Meredith MacRae was virtually born into a show business career, and with her voice and good looks it would have been difficult for her to have avoided such a choice, even if she'd wanted to. Her parents actually led a surprisingly unpretentious middle-class life-style, and she earned all of her breaks, whether they were roles in movies (Bikini Beach) or a chance at a recording career -- she cut a handful of records in the early/middle 1960s. But it was on the series My Three Sons in 1963 that she first became widely known on the small-screen, when she took the role of Sally Morrison. After two years in that part, she moved on to Petticoat Junction, where she took over the role of Billie Jo Bradley from Guinilla Hutton -- she kept the part for the five years remaining in the series' run, and the producers enabled MacRae to feature her singing ability in the part. Following the cancellation of the series, MacRae went on to do guest spots of series ranging from Fantasy Island to The Rackford Files, and she was also a frequence guest on game shows. She was also active in summer stock and regional theater productions of such shows as Bye Bye Birdie and Take Me Along, and raised money for various medical charities. MacRae died of complications from brain cancer in the summer of 2000.

Trivia: Torin Thatcher came out of a military family in India to become a top stage actor in England and a well-known character actor in international films and television. Born Torin Herbert Erskine Thatcher in Bombay, India, in 1905, he was the great-grandson and grandson of generals -- one of whom had fought with Clive -- but he planned for a quieter life; educated at Bedford School, he originally intended to become a teacher before being bitten by the acting bug. Instead, he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and later worked in every kind of theatrical production there was, from Greek tragedy to burlesque. Thatcher made his London debut in 1927 as Tranio in a production of The Taming of the Shrew with the Old Vic Company, and he subsequently portrayed both the Ghost and Claudius in Hamlet with the same company. In the years that followed, Thatcher was in more than 50 Shakespearean productions and 20 plays by George Bernard Shaw. The outbreak of the Second World War took Thatcher into uniform, and he served for six years in the army, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel before he returned to civilian life in 1946. In 1944, Thatcher had made his first acquaintance of the theater world in New York when he found himself on leave in the city with only ten shillings in his pocket -- he spent it sparingly and discovered that Allied servicemen, even officers, were accorded a great many perks in those days; he was also amazed and delighted when he was recognized while on his way into a play in New York by a theatergoer who was able to name virtually every movie that he'd done in England over the preceding decade. He got a firsthand look at the city's generosity and also made sure to meet a number of people associated with the New York theater scene, contacts that served him in good stead when he returned to New York in 1946, as a civilian eager to pick up his career. He starred in two plays opposite Katharine Cornell, First Born and That Lady, and portrayed Claggart in a stage adaptation of Billy Budd, but his big success was in Noel Langley and Robert Morley's Edward My Son. Thatcher had been in movies in England since 1933, in small roles, occasionally in major and important films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Young and Innocent (1937) and Michael Powell's The Spy in Black (1939); his British career had peaked with a superb performance in a small but important role in Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol (1948). After moving to the United States, however, Thatcher quickly moved up to starring and major supporting roles in Hollywood movies, beginning with Affair in Trinidad (1952). He was busy at 20th Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros. over the next decade, moving between their American and British units, and stood out in such hit movies as The Crimson Pirate (1952) (as the pirate Humble Bellows) and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). Although Thatcher could play benevolent characters, his intense expression and presence and imposing physique made him more natural as a villain, and he spent his later career in an array of screen malefactors, of whom the best known was the sorcerer Sokurah in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), directed by Nathan Juran. Thatcher and Juran were close friends and the director loved to use him -- the two became a kind of double act together for a time, turning up in "The Space Trader" episode of Lost in Space, guest-starring Thatcher and directed by Juran.