Trivia: Band singer Vivian Blaine was signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1942 as yet another of that studio's potential Betty Grable replacements. Vivian was given a major boost when assigned the female lead in the Laurel and Hardy comedy Jitterbugs (1943), which showcased her talents in three well-mounted production numbers. She went on to bigger and better screen assignments in such lavish Fox musicals as Something for the Boys (1944), State Fair (1945) and Three Little Girls in Blue (1947). She left Fox in 1947 to pursue a nightclub career, which turned into a nightmarish experience when she was booed off the stage by fanatical fans of her opening act, Martin and Lewis. Vivian survived this setback by creating the role of Miss Adelaide in the blockbuster 1950 Broadway musical Guys and Dolls, repeating this triumph in the London production and the 1955 film version. In 1951, Vivian co-starred with Pinky Lee on the popular musical comedy TV series Those Two. Active in film character roles into the 1980s, Vivian Blaine also played a recurring part on the satirical TV soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976-77).

Trivia: The son of an Italian immigrants, Perry Como worked as a barber in his Pennsylvania hometown before inagurating his singing career in 1933 with the Ted Weems Orchestra. Rapidly gaining popularity during WWII with his mellow, easygoing ballads, Como was signed to a 20th Century Fox contract, appearing in four films before deciding that the movies weren't for him. He made a successful transition from radio to TV in 1948 as star of The Chesterfield Supper Club. He remained a top-rated video attraction well into the early '60s, most memorably as host of The Kraft Music Hall (1955-1963). So relaxed that it appeared he was about to fall asleep, Como was ideal for the "cool" medium of television. He continued turning out best-selling records throughout his TV career, including Catch a Falling Star, Find a Wheel, and his signature tune Dream Along With Me. After 1963, he starred in the occasional TV special, and in 1970 made a long-overdue return to live performance. Though active into the 1990s, Perry Como never felt the need to return to films, save for his voice-over contribution to 1974's The Odessa File.

Trivia: Moviedom's "Brazilian Bombshell" was actually born in Portugal, but as a child Carmen Miranda moved with her large and prosperous family to Rio de Janeiro. That she became a popular musical comedy star is all the more remarkable when one realizes that Miranda was born with deformed feet and had to wear special "lifts" for her performances. Miranda was a well-established and much beloved Brazilian radio, stage, and film personality when, at age 30, she was brought to America by the Schubert Brothers to appear in the 1939 Broadway revue The Streets of Paris (which also served as the "legit" debut of former burlesque comics Abbott and Costello). She was signed to a long-term 20th Century-Fox contract in 1940, which proved a wise move when World War II dried up the European movie market, leaving South America as practically the only foreign outlet for Hollywood films. A flamboyant exponent of the "good neighbor" policy, Miranda sang and danced her way through a series of garish Fox musicals, the most outrageous of which was The Gang's All Here (1943), in which she sang "The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat" while adorned with a seemingly gargantuan piece of fruit-laden headgear. When the demand for South-of-the-Border musicals petered out during the postwar era, Miranda began limiting her screen performances, spending more of her professional time with successful nightclub engagements. Off-screen, Miranda was a talented sketch artist and costume designer; she was also very active in charitable work, seeing to it that a generous percentage of her earnings were sent to the destitute in South America. After completing a strenuous dance number for a 1955 episode of TV's The Jimmy Durante Show, Miranda suffered a fatal heart attack; her death touched off widespread mourning throughout all of Latin America. The actress' memory is kept alive by the Carmen Miranda Museum in Rio De Janeiro.

Trivia: Growing up in the squalid Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Phil Silvers used his excellent tenor voice and facility for cracking jokes to escape a life of poverty. He was discovered as a young teen by vaudevillian Gus Edwards who hired him to perform in his schoolroom act. Silvers' singing career ended when his voice changed at 16, whereupon he took acting jobs in various touring vaudeville sketches. During his subsequent years in burlesque, he befriended fellow comic Herbie Faye, with whom he would work off and on for the rest of his career. While headlining in burlesque, Silvers was signed to star in the 1939 Broadway musical comedy Yokel Boy. This led to film work, first in minor roles, then as comedy relief in such splashy 1940s musicals as Coney Island (1943) and Cover Girl (1944). Silvers became popular if not world famous with his trademark shifty grin, horn-rimmed glasses, balding pate, and catchphrases like "Gladda see ya!" He returned to Broadway in 1947, where he starred as a turn-of-the-century con man in the Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn musical High Button Shoes. In 1950, he scored another stage success as a Milton Berle-like TV comedian in Top Banana, which won him the Tony and Donaldson Awards. From 1955 through 1959, Silvers starred as the wheeling-dealing Sgt. Ernie Bilko on the hit TV series You'll Never Get Rich, for which he collected five Emmy awards. Upon the demise of this series, Silvers stepped into another success, the 1960 Styne-Comden-Green Broadway musical Do Re Mi. The failure of his 1963 sitcom The New Phil Silvers Show marked a low point in his career, but the ever scrappy Silvers bounced back again to appear in films and TV specials. In 1971, he starred in a revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (nine years after turning down the original 1962 production because he felt the show "wouldn't go anywhere."). He collected yet another Tony for his efforts -- then suffered a severe stroke in August of 1972. While convalescing, Silvers wrote his very candid autobiography, The Laugh Is on Me. He recovered to the extent that he could still perform, but his speech was slurred and his timing was gone. Still, Silvers was beloved by practically everyone in show business, so he never lacked for work. Phil Silvers was the father of actress Cathy Silvers, best known for her supporting work on the TV series Happy Days.

Trivia: The son of circus performers, Harry James first picked up a trumpet at age 10. Organizing his own band in the early 1930s, James' progress was spotty until scoring a hit with the old standby "You Made Me Love You." By 1942, he was the most popular bandleader in the U.S. -- and in the bargain, he was married to the Number One female film star, Betty Grable. James hardly needed films to bolster his fame, but it was de rigeur in the 1930s and 1940s for bandleaders to show up on screen once in a while. Obligingly, he appeared (and on occasion spoke a few lines, rather better than most bandleaders) in such films as Private Buckaroo (42), Springtime in the Rockies (42), Bathing Beauty (44), Two Girls and a Sailor (44) and Carnegie Hall (47). James also dubbed in the trumpeting of Kirk Douglas in Young Man with a Horn (50), an a clef retelling of the Bix Beiderbecke story. Surviving the decline of the Big-Band era, James remained popular into the 1950s and 1960s, guesting in films like The Benny Goodman Story (56) and Jerry Lewis' The Ladies' Man (61). TV fans desiring an opportunity to see a trumpet-playing and acting Harry James (and Betty Grable as well) are referred to the 1958 Lucy/Desi Comedy Hour special "Lucy Buys a Racehorse".

Trivia: Intending to become a dentist like his father, American actor Edgar Buchanan wound up with grades so bad in college that he was compelled to take an "easy" course to improve his average. Buchanan chose a course in play interpretation, and after listening to a few recitations of Shakespeare he was stagestruck. After completing dental school, Buchanan plied his oral surgery skills in the summertime, devoting the fall, winter and spring months to acting in stock companies and at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He was given a screen test by Warner Bros. studios in 1940, received several bit roles, then worked himself up to supporting parts upon transferring to Columbia Pictures. Though still comparatively youthful, Buchanan specialized in grizzled old westerners, with a propensity towards villainy or at least larceny. The actor worked at every major studio (and not a few minor ones) over the next few years, still holding onto his dentist's license just in case he needed something to fall back on. Though he preferred movie work to the hurried pace of TV filming, Buchanan was quite busy in television's first decade, costarring with William Boyd on the immensely popular Hopalong Cassidy series, then receiving a starring series of his own, Judge Roy Bean, in 1954. Buchanan became an international success in 1963 thanks to his regular role as the lovably lazy Uncle Joe Carson on the classic sitcom Petticoat Junction, which ran until 1970. After that, the actor experienced a considerably shorter run on the adventure series Cade's County, which starred Buchanan's close friend Glenn Ford. Buchanan's last movie role was in Benji (1974), which reunited him with the titular doggie star, who had first appeared as the family mutt on Petticoat Junction.

Trivia: While the name and face may not be familiar, the voice of Reed Hadley will be instantly recognizable to filmgoers of the 1940s. Working as an actor by night and floorwalker by day, the tall, spare Hadley began picking up radio gigs in the 1930s. His best-known airwaves assignment was the voice of western hero Red Ryder. In films from 1938, Hadley spent his first few years before the camera bouncing around between heroes and heavies; he starred in the 1939 serial Zorro's Fighting Legion, and was seen briefly as a burlesqued Hollywood matinee idol in W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick (1940). Signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1943, Hadley appeared onscreen and served as the offscreen narrator of such "docudramas" as House on 92nd Street (1945), Call Northside 777 (1947) and Boomerang (1947). From 1950 through 1953, Hadley starred as Captain Braddock, the unctuous, chain-smoking star/narrator of the popular TV series Racket Squad; in 1954, he played a similar role on the 39-week series Public Defender. Considering the fact that Reed Hadley's deep, persuasive voice was his fortune, it is ironic that his last screen role was a non-speaking supporting part in Roger Corman's The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967).

Trivia: Slight, grey-templed, bespectacled actor Harry Hayden was cast to best advantage as small-town store proprietors, city attorneys and minor bureaucrats. Dividing his time between stage and screen work from 1936, Hayden became one of the busiest members of Central Casting, appearing in everything from A-pictures like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) to the RKO 2-reelers of Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy. Among his better-known unbilled assignments are horn factory owner Mr. Sharp (his partner is Mr. Pierce) in Laurel and Hardy's Saps at Sea (1940) and Farley Granger's harrumphing boss who announces brusquely that there'll be no Christmas bonus in O. Henry's Full House (1951). Hayden's final flurry of activity was in the role of next-door-neighbor Harry on the 1954-55 season of TV's The Stu Erwin Show (aka The Trouble with Father), in which he was afforded the most screen time he'd had in years -- though he remains uncredited in the syndicated prints of this popular series. From the mid '30s until his death in 1955, Harry Hayden and his actress wife Lela Bliss ran Beverly Hills' Bliss-Hayden Miniature Theatre, where several Hollywood aspirants were given an opportunity to learn their craft before live audiences; among the alumni of the Bliss-Hayden were Jon Hall, Veronica Lake, Doris Day, Craig Stevens, Debbie Reynolds, and Marilyn Monroe.

Trivia: American actor and (sometimes) screenwriter William Halligan first appeared before the cameras in 1930. Halligan enjoyed a brief flurry of prominent film roles until 1932, then he returned to the stage. He came back in the 1940s in small parts, mostly at RKO and Paramount. The next time the ubiquitous Til the Clouds Roll By (1946) shows up on television, sharp-eyed viewers should try to spot William Halligan as Captain Andy in the opening Show Boat medley.

Trivia: The son of vaudeville monologist Julius Tannen, Charles Tannen launched his own film career in 1936. For the rest of his movie "life," Tannen was most closely associated with 20th Century Fox, playing minor roles in films both large (John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath) and not so large (Laurel and Hardy's Great Guns). Rarely receiving screen credit, Tannen continued playing utility roles well into the 1960s, showing up in such Fox productions as The Fly (1958) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). Charles Tannen's older brother, William, was also an active film performer during this period.

Trivia: When actor Charles C. Wilson wasn't portraying a police chief onscreen, he was likely to be cast as a newspaper editor. The definitive Wilson performance in this vein was as Joe Gordon, reporter Clark Gable's apoplectic city editor in the 1934 multi-award winner It Happened One Night. Like many easily typecast actors, Wilson was usually consigned to one-scene (and often one-line) bits, making the sort of instant impression that hundreds of scripted words could not adequately convey. Shortly before his death in 1948, Charles C. Wilson could once more be seen at the editor's desk of a big-city newspaper -- this time as the boss of those erstwhile newshounds the Three Stooges in the two-reel comedy Crime on Their Hands (1948).

Trivia: Busy character actor Frank Ferguson was able to parlay his pinched facial features, his fussy little moustache, and his bellows-like voice for a vast array of characterizations. Ferguson was equally effective as a hen-pecked husband, stern military leader, irascible neighbor, merciless employer, crooked sheriff, and barbershop hanger-on. He made his inaugural film appearance in Father is a Prince (1940) and was last seen on the big screen in The Great Sioux Massacre (1965). Ferguson proved himself an above-average actor by successfully pulling off the treacly scene in The Babe Ruth Story (1948) in which Babe (William Bendix) says "Hi, kid" to Ferguson's crippled son--whereupon the boy suddenly stands up and walks! Among Franklin Ferguson's hundreds of TV appearances were regular stints on the children's series My Friend Flicka (1956) and the nighttime soap opera Peyton Place (1964-68).

Trivia: American actor Edward Keane was eminently suitable for roles requiring tuxedos and military uniforms. From his first screen appearance in 1921 to his last in 1952, Keane exuded the dignity and assurance of a self-made man of wealth or a briskly authoritative Armed Services officer. Fortunately his acting fee was modest, enabling Keane to add class to even the cheapest of poverty-row "B"s. Generations of Marx Bros. fans will remember Edward Keane as the ship's captain (he's the one who heaps praise upon the three bearded Russian aviators) in A Night at the Opera (1935).

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: American character actor Harry Cheshire was usually billed as "Pappy," and, like S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall, he certainly lived up to his nickname, both visually and temperamentally. After a long career on stage and in radio, Cheshire came to films in 1940, appearing in many of Republic's "hillbilly" musicals and westerns. In larger-budgeted films, he was usually seen in minor roles as businessmen, ministers, justice of the peaces and the like. He played Dr. Campbell in the Yuletide classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), the stage manager of the ill-fated Iroquois theater in The Seven Little Foys (1955) and the Elvis-hating mayor in Loving You (1957). He also showed up in a few of the Ma and Pa Kettle entries, and was afforded a rare opportunity at all-out villainy in Dangerous Mission (1954). TV western fans will remember Harry Cheshire as Judge Ben Wiley on the Gene Autry-produced weekly Buffalo Bill Jr. (1954).