Trivia: Clifton Webb was the most improbable of movie stars that one could imagine -- in an era in which leading men were supposed to be virile and bold, he was prissy and, well, downright fussy. Where the actors in starring roles were supposed to lead with their fists, or at least the suggestion of potential mayhem befalling those who got in the way of their characters, Webb used a sharp tongue and a waspish manner the way John Wayne wielded a six-gun and Clark Gable a smart mouth, a cocky grin, and great physique. And where male movie stars (except in the singing cowboy movies) were supposed to maintain a screen image that had women melting in their arms if not their presence, Webb hardly ever went near women in most of his screen roles, except in a fatherly or avuncular way. Nevertheles, the public devoured it all, even politely looking past Webb's well-publicized status as a "bachelor" who lived with his mother, and in the process turned him into one of Hollywood's most popular post-World War II movie stars, with a string of successful movies rivaling those of Wayne, Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, or any other leading man one cares to name. Indeed, Webb was for more than 15 years a mainstay of 20th Century Fox, his movies earning profits as reliably as the sun rising -- not bad for a man who was nearly rejected from his first film on the lot because the head of production couldn't abide his fey mannerisms. Clifton Webb was born Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck, in Indianapolis, IN, in 1891 (his date of birth was falsified during his lifetime and pushed up by several years, and some sources list the real year as 1889). His father -- about whom almost nothing is known, except that he was a businessman -- had no interest in preparing his offspring for the stage or the life of a performer, a fact that so appalled his mother (a frustrated actress) that she packed herself and the boy off to New York, and he started dancing lessons at age three. By the time he was seven years old, he was good enough to attract the attention of Malcolm Douglas, the director of the Children's Theatre, and he made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1900 (when he would have been either seven, nine, or 11), playing Cholly in The Brownies. Webb was taking lessons in all of the arts by then, and in 1911, made his operatic debut in La Bohème. It was as a dancer, though, that he first found his real fortune -- seen at a top New York nightspot, he so impressed one lady professional that she immediately proposed a partnership that resulted in an international career for Webb. Webb's acting wasn't neglected, either, and in the 1920s and '30s, he was regarded as one of the top stage talents in the country, a multiple-threat performer equally adept in musicals, comedies, or drama. Early in his career, he'd worked under a variety of names, finally transposing his first name to his last and reportedly taking the Clifton from the New Jersey town, because his mother liked the sound of it. Webb was a well-known figure on-stage, but his value as a film performer was considered marginal until he was well past 50 -- he'd done some film work during the silent era, but in the mid-'30s, he was brought out to Hollywood by MGM for a film project that ran into script problems. He spent a year out there collecting his contracted salary of 3,500 dollars a week and doing absolutely nothing, and hated every minute of it. Webb returned to New York determined never to experience such downtime again, and over the ensuing decade bounced back with hits in George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner and Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, doing the latter for three years. Ironically, the role of Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner was inspired by the real-life author/columnist Alexander Woollcott, who would also be the inspiration for the role that finally brought Webb to Hollywood successfully. In 1943, 20th Century Fox set out to adapt a novel by Vera Caspary entitled Laura to the screen. The book, a murder mystery set in New York, had in it a character named Waldo Lydecker, who was modeled on Alexander Woollcott; a waspish, stylish, and witty author and raconteur, Woollcott was a well-known and popular media figure, who'd even done a little acting onscreen and on-stage. When it came time to cast the role, producer Otto Preminger and director Rouben Mamoulian decided to give Webb a screen test. Preminger was totally convinced of Webb's rightness for the role, and the screen test bore him out, but studio production chief Darryl F. Zanuck couldn't abide Webb's fey, effete mannerisms and obviously gay persona, and did his best to keep him from the role. Luckily, Preminger prevailed, and Webb -- in what is usually regarded as his real film debut -- proved to be one of the most popular elements of what turned out to be a massively popular movie. It was the beginning of a very profitable two-decade relationship between the actor and the studio. Webb gave an Academy Award-caliber performance in Edmund Goulding's The Razor's Edge (1946), and in 1948 he became an out-and-out star, portraying Mr. Belvedere, the housekeeper and "nanny" hired by the harried parents (portrayed by Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara) in the hit comedy Sitting Pretty (1948). Beginning with Laura in 1944, each of the next 15 movies that Webb made was a success, and they included everything from comedies to some of the most intense film noir -- most notably The Dark Corner (1946), in which he played a murderer -- but the role of Mr. Belvedere proved to be so popular that it threatened to swallow him up. Webb flatly refused to do any sequel that did not meet with his approval, and only two ever did -- this even as he received thousands of letters from mothers seeking advice on raising their children. The great unspoken irony in all of this was that Webb was not only unmarried and childless, but was as close to being openly gay as any leading actor in Hollywood could be -- he lived with his mother, and the two attended parties together, and was on record as being a "bachelor," which was code in those days (where certain kinds of actors were concerned) for being gay. And in an era in which this wasn't acceptable as a choice or a condition, audiences didn't care -- in a testimony to the sheer power of his acting, they devoured Webb's work in whatever role he took on. He never did a Western, but he did play a father of two children who unexpectedly rises to heroism in Titanic (1953), and he played the father of 12 children in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950); as he said when asked about the propriety of a childless, unmarried man playing a father of 12, "I didn't need to be a murderer to play Waldo Lydecker -- I'm not a father, but I am an actor." Webb was always stylishly dressed in public, and owned dozens of expensive suits -- he was, in many ways, the America's first pop-culture "metrosexual," and he made it work for two decades. The death of Webb's mother in 1960, reportedly at age 90, was an event from which the actor never fully recovered. Though he did a few more screen appearances, his health was obviously in decline, and he passed away in 1966.

Trivia: Born Sarah Jane Fulks, Jane Wyman tried to break into films as a child but was unsuccessful despite encouragement from her mother. A decade later, she began her show business career as a radio singer, using the name Jane Durrell. In 1936, she began appearing in films as a chorus girl and bit player. Eventually, she moved into secondary roles and occasional leads, usually playing brassy blondes in comic relief. She broke out of this mold with her performance in The Lost Weekend (1945), in which she demonstrated her talents as a serious actress; this led to better roles as a major star. For her work in The Yearling (1946), she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination, then won an Oscar for her portrayal of a deaf-mute rape victim in Johnny Belinda (1948). She went on to star in many films, demonstrating her versatility in both comedies and tearjerkers. She was twice more nominated for Oscars, for The Blue Veil (1951) and Magnificent Obsession (1954). After 1956, her screen work was infrequent. She returned from retirement in the early '80s to play a regular role on the TV series Falcon Crest. From 1940 to 1948, she was married to Ronald Reagan; their daughter, Maureen Reagan, was a singer-actress. After a long period of inactivity, Wyman died at age 93 in early September 2007.

Trivia: The daughter of an ambitious but relatively benign "stage mama," Los Angeles-native Jill St. John was acting on stage at age 5, and on radio from the time she could read; in the late '40s Jill was a regular on the marathon soap opera One Man's Family. Jill's mother changed the girl's name from Oppenheim to St. John when she was 11, and (via surgery) changed her nose from Romanesque to turned-up when Jill was 16. By that time, Jill had been attending UCLA for two full years; she was assessed by experts as having an IQ of 162. Jill wanted to be a comedienne like her idol, Kay Kendall; but when she was signed for a 20th Century-Fox contract in 1958, it was on the basis of her pulchritude rather than her comic timing. After a series of non-descript heroines in such pictures as Holiday for Lovers (1959) and The Lost World (1960), Jill came into her own on the TV guest star circuit. She was most frequently seen on the specials of comedian Bob Hope (ever the connoiseur of feminine beauty) and was also shown to good advantage in a couple of Frank Sinatra films. Virtually all of Jill's film assignments contrived to get her into the skimpiest of swimwear; in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds are Forever, Jill spent at least three-quarters of the picture in brief bikinis. Though not as active on screen in the '80s and '90s as she'd been before, Jill kept busy as the "in house" cooking expert on the daytime TV series Good Morning America and as the food columnist of the USA Weekend newspaper supplement; she has also published several well-received cookbooks. Jil's hobbies have ranged from collecting model trains to dating such high-profile celebrities as Henry Kissinger. Thrice married, Jill St. John was wed in 1990 to actor Robert Wagner, a longtime friend and coworker.

Trivia: A busy teenaged model, Carol Lynley rose to fame by virtue of a series of popular hair-conditioner commercials. Her first important acting assignment was as a high-school-age murderess on a 1958 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, directed by Robert Altman. The blonde ingenue played a more sedate role in her first film, Disney's The Light in the Forest. Carol Lynley continued essaying a variety of sympathetic and menacing roles into the 1990s, earning extensive press coverage for her portrayal of film-legend Jean Harlow in a 1965 "electronivision" production, released at the same time as another Harlow biography starring Carroll Baker.

Trivia: Some sources list actor Paul Henreid's birthplace as Italy, but at the time of his birth, Henreid's hometown of Trieste was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Of aristocratic stock, Henreid felt drawn to theatrical activities while attending college. He briefly supported himself as a translator before Max Reinhardt's assistant Otto Preminger officially discovered him and launched his stage career. Still billed under his given name of Von Hernreid, he made his film debut in a 1933 Moroccan production. Relocating to England in 1935, he was often as not cast as Teutonic villains, most memorably in the 1940 melodrama Night Train. In 1940, Henreid became an American citizen--and, at last, a leading man. Henreid's inbred Continental sophistication struck a responsive chord with wartime audiences. He spent his finest years as an actor at Warner Bros., where he appeared as Jerry Durrance in Bette Davis' Now Voyager (1942), as too-good-to-be-true resistance leader Victor Laszlo in Casablanca (1942), and as troubled medical student Philip Carey in the 1946 remake of Of Human Bondage (1946). Henreid exhibited a great deal of vivacity in such swashbucklers as The Spanish Main (1945), Last of the Buccaneers (1950) and The Siren of Bagdad (1953); in the latter film, the actor engagingly spoofed his own screen image by repeating his lighting-two-cigarettes bit from Now Voyager with an ornate water pipe. He was also an effective villain in Hollow Triumph (1948, which he also produced) and Rope of Sand (1949).Henreid's star faded in the 1950s, a fact he would later attribute (in his 1984 autobiography Ladies Man) to the Hollywood Blacklist. He turned to directing, helming such inexpensive but worthwhile dramas as For Men Only (a 1951 indictment of the college hazing process) and A Woman's Devotion (1954). One of his best directorial efforts was the 1964 meller Dead Ringer, starring his former Warners co-star (and longtime personal friend) Bette Davis. In addition, Henreid directed dozens of 30- and 60-minute installments of such TV series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Maverick. His last on-camera appearance was as "The Cardinal" in Exorcist 2: The Heretic (1977). Henreid married Elizabeth Gluck in 1936, with whom he had two daughters, Monika Henreid and Mimi Duncan. On March 29, 1992, he died of pneumonia, following a stroke, in Santa Monica, California.

Trivia: The oldest son of singer Bing Crosby, American actor Gary Crosby was named for Bing's good friend Gary Cooper. Crosby, along with his three brothers, began his show-biz career as a child on his father's radio program. In 1942 he appeared in the movie musical Star Spangled Rhythm, where he was kissed by Betty Grable. For the next few years he was only seen in film sporadically. In 1962, with the encouragement of his wife, Gary began pursuing a performing career in earnest, first as part of a nightclub act with his brothers, then as a solo singer. In 1963 Crosby was signed for a two-year continuing role on the TV sitcom The Bill Dana Show. After its 1965 cancellation his career went on hold until director Hollingsworth Morse persuaded TV actor/producer Jack Webb to take a chance with Gary and give him a few supporting roles on the 1960s version of Dragnet.Webb liked Crosby and retained him in the role of Officer Ed Wells on Adam-12, which debuted in 1968. With three years of Adam-12 under his belt, Crosby took on the role of Officer Ed Rice on the short-lived cop show Chase (1974). While his father was still alive, Crosby was usually guarded in his comments about his relationship with his father, but after his father died in 1977, Gary found himself an object of much media scrutiny and in 1983, six years after his father's death, he published a scathing account of his troubled upbringing in Going My Own Way. The book not only generated public controversy, it also created turmoil amongst his brothers and his step family.

Trivia: Greco-American actor Nico Minardos inaugurated his film career in 1955. Many of his earlier assignments were unstressed minor roles like "Ali" in the Errol Flynn starrer Istanbul (1956). His larger parts include Carlos, potential "Latin Lover" to tourists Jill St. John and Carol Lynley, in Holiday For Lovers (1959), and hard-bitten westerner DeLeon in Day of the Evil Gun (1968). Nico Minardo's last film was 1975's Assault on Agathan, which he also produced.

Trivia: Wally Brown built up his reputation in vaudeville as a fast-talking (albeit low-pressure) monologist. In 1942, Brown decided to settle down in Hollywood with a contract at RKO Radio Pictures, making his movie-debut in Petticoat Larceny (1943). When RKO decided to emulate the success of Universal's Abbott and Costello, the studio teamed Brown with short, stocky Alan Carney for a series of energetic but undistinguished "B" pictures, the first of which was the Buck Privates wannabe Adventures of a Rookie (1943). Brown and Carney used the same character names (Brown played Jerry Miles, while Carney played Mike Strager) in each of their starring films--which is just as well, since the movies are virtually impossible to tell apart. Arguably the team's best film was 1945's Zombies on Broadway. RKO folded Brown and Carney in 1946, after which both actors continued working in films as solo character performers; they would be reunited, after a fashion, in the 1961 Disney film The Absent Minded Professor. Wally Brown spent most of his last decade as a prolific TV guest star; his last performance, telecast posthumously, was an appearance on My Three Sons.