Trivia: The son of a Canadian railroad executive, Glenn Ford first toddled on-stage at age four in a community production of Tom Thumb's Wedding. In 1924, Ford's family moved to California, where he was active in high-school theatricals. He landed his first professional theater job as a stage manager in 1934, and, within a year, he was acting in the West Coast company of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour. Although he made his film debut in 20th Century Fox's Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence (1939), Ford was signed by Columbia, which remained his home base for the next 14 years. After an apprenticeship in such B-movies as Blondie Plays Cupid (1940), Ford was promoted to Columbia's A-list. Outwardly a most ordinary and unprepossessing personality, Ford possessed that intangible "something" that connected with audiences. The first phase of his stardom was interrupted by World War II service in the Marines (he retained his officer's commission long after the war, enabling him to make goodwill visits to Korea and Vietnam). Upon his return, Ford had some difficulty jump-starting his career, but, in 1946, he was back on top as Rita Hayworth's co-star in Gilda. While he insisted that he "never played anyone but [himself] onscreen," Ford's range was quite extensive. He was equally effective as a tormented film noir hero (The Big Heat [1953], Human Desire [1954]) as he was in light comedy (Teahouse of the August Moon [1956], The Gazebo[1959]). Nearly half of his films were Westerns, many of which -- The Desperadoes (1943), The Fastest Gun Alive (1956), 3:10 to Yuma (1957), Cowboy (1958) -- were among the best and most successful examples of that highly specialized genre. He was also quite effective at conveying courage under pressure: While it was clear that his characters in such films as The Blackboard Jungle (1955) and Ransom (1956) were terrified by the circumstances surrounding them, it was also obvious that they weren't about to let that terror get the better of them. In 1958, Ford was voted the number one male box-office attraction. Through sagacious career choices, the actor was able to extend his popularity long after the studio system that "created" him had collapsed. In 1971, he joined such film stars as Shirley MacLaine, Anthony Quinn, and Jimmy Stewart in the weekly television grind. While his series Cade's County ended after a single season, in the long run it was more successful than the vintage-like programs of MacLaine, Quinn, et al., and enjoyed a healthy life in syndication. Ford went on to star in another series, The Family Holvak (1975), and hosted a weekly documentary, When Havoc Struck (1978). He also headlined such miniseries as Once an Eagle (1976) and Evening in Byzantium (1978), and delivered a particularly strong performance as an Irish-American patriarch in the made-for-TV feature The Gift (1979). He continued showing up in choice movie supporting roles into the early '90s; one of the best of these was as Clark Kent's foster father in Superman: The Movie (1978).Although illness sharply curtailed his performing activities after that, Ford was still seemingly on call during the 1980s and '90s whenever a cable TV documentary on Hollywood's Golden Era required an eyewitness interview subject. In 1970, Ford published an autobiography, Glenn Ford, RFD Beverly Hills. His first wife was actress Eleanor Powell; He was also married to Kathryn Hays and Cynthia Hayward. His last film appearance was a cameo in 1993's Tombstone; after a series of strokes later that decade, he died in 2006 at the age of 90.

Trivia: The son of a barber, Richard Conte held down jobs ranging from truck driver, to Wall Street clerk before finding his place as an actor. In 1935, Conte became a waiter/entertainer in a Connecticut resort, which led to stage work when he was spotted by Group Theatre's Elia Kazan and John Garfield. Through Kazan's help, Conte earned a scholarship to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse. His first Broadway appearance was in the fast-flop Moon Over Mulberry Street. In 1939, still billed as Nicholas Conte, the actor made his first film, 20th Century-Fox's Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence (1939). It was Fox which would build up the intense, brooding Conte as the "New John Garfield" upon signing him to a contract in 1943. His best parts during his Fox years included the wrongly imprisoned man who is exonerated by crusading reporter James Stewart in Call Northside 777 (1947), and the lead role as a wildcat trucker in Thieves' Highway (1949). Among Conte's many TV assignments was a co-starring stint with Dan Dailey, Jack Hawkins and Vittorio De Sica on the 1959 syndicated series The Four Just Men. Appearing primarily in European films in his last years, Conte directed the Yugoslavian-filmed Operation Cross Eagles. Richard Conte's most important Hollywood role in the 1970s was as rival Mafia Don Barzini in the Oscar-winning The Godfather (1972).

Trivia: Blonde, wide-eyed film ingénue Jean Rogers came to Hollywood on the strength of a beauty contest. She rose to stardom as the fetchingly underdressed, ever-imperiled Dale Arden in the popular Universal serial Flash Gordon (1936). She also co-starred in the second Gordon serial, as well as such chapter plays as Ace Drummond (1935) and The Adventures of Frank Merriwell (1936). From Universal, Rogers moved on to 20th Century Fox, where she starred in a series of enjoyable B-pictures, the best of which (though not her personal favorite) was Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence (1939). She appeared in supporting parts in several MGM films of the 1940s, then freelanced in independent productions. Jean Rogers retired from show business in 1951 upon her marriage to a successful actors' agent.

Trivia: Born in Indiana, Raymond Walburn began his theatrical career in Oakland, California, where his actress mother had relocated. Walburn was 18 when he made his stage debut in MacBeth, for the princely sum of $5 a week; he immediately, albeit inadvertently, established himself as a comic actor when his line "Fillet of a fenny snake" came out as "Fillet of a funny snake." The following year, Walburn was acting in stock in San Francisco, where the old adage "the show must go on" was tested to the utmost when one of his performances was interrupted by the 1906 earthquake (at least, that was his story). In 1911, he made his Broadway bow in Greyhound; it was a flop, as were Walburn's subsequent New York appearances over the next five years. He finally managed to latch onto a hit when he was cast in the long-running Come Out of the Kitchen. Following his World War I service, Walburn hit his stride as a Broadway laughgetter, starring in the original production of George Kelly's The Show Off. After a tentative stab at moviemaking in 1928, Walburn settled in Hollywood full-time in 1934, where his bombastic, lovable-fraud characterizations made him a favorite of such directors as Frank Capra and Preston Sturges. Usually relegated to the supporting-cast ranks, Walburn was given an opportunity to star in Monogram's inexpensive "Henry" series in 1949, an assignment made doubly pleasurable because it gave him the opportunity to work with his lifelong pal Walter Catlett. Retiring after his final screen appearance in The Spoilers (1955), Raymond Walburn revived his Broadway career in 1962 when he was persuaded by producer Harold Prince to play Erronious in A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.

Trivia: At age 12 she began performing in stage productions. She was a major Broadway star in the '10s and '20s and appeared in a dozen or so silent films, most of them released in 1917. She moved to Hollywood in her early 40s, playing a wide variety of major character roles and some leads between 1930-57; she tended to portray aging harlots and fallen women, and could be raucous, vicious, heartbreaking, or commanding in her portrayals. For her work in Primrose Path (1940) she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, and was again nominated in that category for Torch Song (1953). She married and divorced Willard Mack, an actor, playwright, and screenwriter.

Trivia: American actor Ward Bond was a football player at the University of Southern California when, together with teammate and lifelong chum John Wayne, he was hired for extra work in the silent film Salute (1928), directed by John Ford. Both Bond and Wayne continued in films, but it was Wayne who ascended to stardom, while Bond would have to be content with bit roles and character parts throughout the 1930s. Mostly playing traffic cops, bus drivers and western heavies, Bond began getting better breaks after a showy role as the murderous Cass in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Ford cast Bond in important roles all through the 1940s, usually contriving to include at least one scene per picture in which the camera would favor Bond's rather sizable posterior; it was an "inside" joke which delighted everyone on the set but Bond. A starring role in Ford's Wagonmaster (1950) led, somewhat indirectly, to Bond's most lasting professional achievement: His continuing part as trailmaster Seth Adams on the extremely popular NBC TV western, Wagon Train. No longer supporting anyone, Bond exerted considerable creative control over the series from its 1957 debut onward, even seeing to it that his old mentor John Ford would direct one episode in which John Wayne had a bit role, billed under his real name, Marion Michael Morrison. Finally achieving the wide popularity that had eluded him during his screen career, Bond stayed with Wagon Train for three years, during which time he became as famous for his offscreen clashes with his supporting cast and his ultra-conservative politics as he was for his acting. Wagon Train was still NBC's Number One series when, in November of 1960, Bond unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and died while taking a shower.

Trivia: Irving Bacon entered films at the Keystone Studios in 1913, where his athletic prowess and Ichabod Crane-like features came in handy for the Keystone brand of broad slapstick. He appeared in over 200 films during the silent and sound era, often playing mailmen, soda jerks and rustics. In The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938) it is Irving, as a flustered jury foreman, who delivers the film's punchline. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Irving played the recurring role of Mr. Crumb in Columbia's Blondie series; he's the poor postman who is forever being knocked down by the late-for-work Dagwood Bumstead, each collision accompanied by a cascade of mail flying through the air. Irving Bacon kept his hand in throughout the 1950s, appearing in a sizeable number of TV situation comedies.

Trivia: Of Norwegian descent, brunette Kay Linaker had graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and appeared in a couple of short-lived Broadway plays -- including Henry Rosendahl's Yesterday's Orchids (1934) with fellow Hollywood hopefuls Carleton Young and Richard Reeves -- prior to signing with Warner Bros. and later Fox, where she mainly played supporting roles in Grade-A production while earning leading assignments in programmers. With Paramount in the 1940s, Linaker usually played society women, often rather cold-hearted, but left the screen to marry writer-turned-television executive Howard Phillips. As Kate Phillips, she co-wrote (with Theodore Simonson) the screenplay to the sci-fi classic The Blob (1958) and, later still, taught courses at a university in New Hampshire.

Trivia: Cadaverous British actor Nigel De Brulier is most closely associated with classical roles. His first film (after decades of stage work) was a 1915 adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts; six years later he was in another Ibsen adaptation, A Doll's House. In Douglas Fairbanks' 1921 version of The Three Musketeers De Brulier played the cunning Cardinal Richelieu, a role he repeated briefly in the 1929 sequel The Iron Mask. He was also prominently featured in the Lon Chaney Hunchback of Notre Dame as Dom Claude, the head priest. Possessed of a rich theatrical voice, Nigel de Brulier made the transition to sound with ease, but most of his '30s roles were mere character bits; an exception was the 1935 Three Musketeers, in which he played Richelieu again. Towards the end of his career, and without complaint or regret, the venerable actor accepted one-day parts in "B" pictures, short subjects, westerns and serials. The best of Nigel De Brulier's latter-day assignments was as the robed, white-bearded Shazam, the ancient mystic who gives young Billy Batson (Frank Coghlan Jr.) superhuman powers in the Republic serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941).

Trivia: When American actor Paul Hurst became the comedy sidekick in the Monte Hale western series at Republic in the early '50s, he came by the work naturally; he had been born and bred on California's Miller and Lux Ranch. While in his teens, Hurst attained his first theatre job as a scenery painter in San Francisco, making his on-stage debut at age 19. In 1911, Hurst ventured into western films, wearing three hats as a writer, director and actor. He worked ceaselessly in character roles throughout the '20s, '30s and '40s, most often in comedy parts as dim-witted police officers and muscle-headed athletes. He also showed up in leading roles in 2-reelers, notably as a punchdrunk trainer in Columbia's Glove Slingers series. On at least two memorable occasions, Hurst eschewed comedy for villainy: in 1943's The Ox-Bow Incident, he's the lynch-mob member who ghoulishly reminds the victims what's in store for them by grabbing his collar and making choking sounds. And in Gone with the Wind, Hurst is Hell personified as the Yankee deserter and would-be rapist whom Scarlet O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) shoots in the face at point blank range. Paul Hurst kept busy into the early '50s; at the age of 65, he ended his career and his life in suicide.