Trivia: Handsome, sophisticated, mustachioed Australian actor Alan Marshal launched his screen career in 1936, appearing in two films, The Garden of Allah and After the Thin Man. Marshal is frequently cast as witty, daring heroes. Notable film appearances include The Conquest (1937), in which he appeared opposite Greta Garbo, and The White Cliffs of Dover (1943) with Irene Dunne. Before coming to the U.S. in the mid-'30s, Marshal worked on the Australian stage. In Hollywood, he contracted with David O. Selznick and MGM, but frequently was loaned out to appear in other studios' productions. A nervous condition prevented Marshal from appearing in films throughout much of the 1940s. During that period, Marshal returned to stage work. He made his final film appearances in the late '50s. Marshal, who at one time had been compared to Ronald Colman, died on the Chicago stage while working opposite Mae West in Sextet.

Trivia: In the first ten years of his life, Raymond Burr moved from town to town with his mother, a single parent who supported her little family by playing the organ in movie houses and churches. An unusually large child, he was able to land odd jobs that would normally go to adults. He worked as a ranch hand, a traveling tinted-photograph salesman, a Forest service fire guard, and a property agent in China, where his mother had briefly resettled. At 19, he made the acquaintance of film director Anatole Litvak, who arranged for Burr to get a job at a Toronto summer-stock theater. This led to a stint with a touring English rep company; one of his co-workers, Annette Sutherland, became his first wife. After a brief stint as a nightclub singer in Paris, Burr studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and took adult education courses at Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Chunking. His first New York theatrical break was in the 1943 play Duke in Darkness. That same year, his wife Sutherland was killed in the same plane crash that took the life of actor Leslie Howard. Distraught after the death of his wife, Burr joined the Navy, served two years, then returned to America in the company of his four-year-old son, Michael Evan Burr (Michael would die of leukemia in 1953). Told by Hollywood agents that he was overweight for movies, the 340-pound Burr spent a torturous six months living on 750 calories per day. Emerging at a trim 210 pounds, he landed his first film role, an unbilled bit as Claudette Colbert's dancing partner in Without Reservations (1946). It was in San Quentin (1946), his next film, that Burr found his true metier, as a brooding villain. He spent the next ten years specializing in heavies, menacing everyone from the Marx Brothers (1949's Love Happy) to Clark Gable (1950's Key to the City) to Montgomery Clift (1951's A Place in the Sun) to Natalie Wood (1954's A Cry in the Night). His most celebrated assignments during this period included the role of melancholy wife murderer Lars Thorwald in Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and reporter Steve Martin in the English-language scenes of the Japanese monster rally Godzilla (1956), a characterization he'd repeat three decades later in Godzilla 1985. While he worked steadily on radio and television, Burr seemed a poor prospect for series stardom, especially after being rejected for the role of Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke on the grounds that his voice was too big. In 1957, he was tested for the role of district attorney Hamilton Burger in the upcoming TV series Perry Mason. Tired of playing unpleasant secondary roles, Burr agreed to read for Burger only if he was also given a shot at the leading character. Producer Gail Patrick Jackson, who'd been courting such big names as William Holden, Fred MacMurray, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr., agreed to humor Burr by permitting him to test for both Burger and Perry Mason. Upon viewing Burr's test for the latter role, Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner jumped up, pointed at the screen, and cried "That's him!" Burr was cast as Mason on the spot, remaining with the role until the series' cancellation in 1966 and winning three Emmies along the way. Though famous for his intense powers of concentration during working hours -- he didn't simply play Perry Mason, he immersed himself in the role -- Burr nonetheless found time to indulge in endless on-set practical jokes, many of these directed at his co-star and beloved friend, actress Barbara Hale. Less than a year after Mason's demise, Burr was back at work as the wheelchair-bound protagonist of the weekly detective series Ironside, which ran from 1967 to 1975. His later projects included the short-lived TVer Kingston Confidential (1976), a sparkling cameo in Airplane 2: The Sequel (1982), and 26 two-hour Perry Mason specials, lensed between 1986 and 1993. Burr was one of the most liked and highly respected men in Hollywood. Fiercely devoted to his friends and co-workers, Burr would threaten to walk off the set whenever one of his associates was treated in a less than chivalrous manner by the producers or the network. Burr also devoted innumerable hours to charitable and humanitarian works, including his personally financed one-man tours of Korean and Vietnamese army bases, his support of two dozen foster children, and his generous financial contributions to the population of the 4,000-acre Fiji island of Naitauba, which he partly owned. Despite his unbounded generosity and genuine love of people, Burr was an intensely private person. After his divorce from his second wife and the death from cancer of his third, Burr remained a bachelor from 1955 until his death. Stricken by kidney cancer late in 1992, he insisted upon maintaining his usual hectic pace, filming one last Mason TV movie and taking an extended trip to Europe. In his last weeks, Burr refused to see anyone but his closest friends, throwing "farewell" parties to keep their spirits up. Forty-eight hours after telling his longtime friend and business partner Robert Benevides, "If I lie down, I'll die," 76-year-old Raymond Burr did just that -- dying as he'd lived, on his own terms.

Trivia: According to her Rockford, Illinois, high-school yearbook, Barbara Hale hoped to make a career for herself as a commercial artist. Instead, she found herself posing for artists as a professional model. This led to a movie contract at RKO Radio, where she worked her way up from "B"s like The Falcon in Hollywood (1945) to such top-of-the-bill attractions as A Likely Story (1947) and The Boy With Green Hair (1949). She continued to enjoy star billing at Columbia, where among other films she essayed the title role in Lorna Doone (1952). Her popularity dipped a bit in the mid-1950s, but she regained her following in the Emmy-winning role of super-efficient legal secretary Della Street on the Perry Mason TV series. She played Della on a weekly basis from 1957 through 1966, and later appeared in the irregularly scheduled Perry Mason two-hour TV movies of the 1980s and 1990s. The widow of movie leading man Bill Williams, Barbara Hale was the mother of actor/director William Katt. Hale died in 2017, at age 94.

Trivia: The son of legendary Broadway actor DeWolfe Hopper and movie actress Hedda Hopper, William Hopper made his film debut as an infant in one of his father's films. The popular consensus is that the younger Hopper was given his first talking-picture break because of his mother's reputation as the most feared of the Hollywood gossips. Not so: Hopper was signed to his first Warner Bros. contract in 1937, a year or so before Hedda had established herself as the queen of the dirt-dishers. At first billing himself as DeWolfe Hopper Jr., Hopper languished in bit parts and walk-ons for several years. He wasn't able to graduate to better roles until the 1950s, by which time he was calling himself William Hopper. After a largely undistinguished film career (notable exceptions to his usual humdrum assignments were his roles in 20 Million Miles to Earth [1957] and The Bad Seed [1956]) Hopper finally gained fame -- and on his own merits -- as private detective Paul Drake on the enormously popular Perry Mason television series, which began its eight-season run in 1957. In a bizarre coincidence, Perry Mason left the air in 1966, the same year that William Hopper's mother Hedda passed away.

Trivia: The scion of a wealthy Detroit family, William Talman would later claim that he learned to "champion the underdog" while a member of his Episcopal church boxing team. In his 20s, Talman became an evangelist for the Moral Re-Armament Movement, and later made at stab at studying law. He drifted to New York, where, through the intervention of an actor friend of his father, he began picking up small stage roles. After extensive experience in New York and in the touring company of Of Mice and Men, Talman moved to Hollywood, where in 1949 he played his first important screen role as a gangster in Red, Hot and Blue (1949). At his best when his characters were at their worst, Talman developed into one of Tinseltown's most fearsome screen villains, never more so than when he played a psycho killer who slept with one eye open in the noir classic The Hitchhiker (1955). In 1957, Talman was cast as Hamilton Burger, the perennially losing District Attorney on the popular TV weekly Perry Mason. He remained with the series until March of 1960, when he was arrested for throwing a wild party where vast quantities of illegal substances were consumed. The Perry Mason producers had every intention of firing Talman from the series, but he was reinstated thanks to the loyal intervention of his co-stars -- particularly Raymond Burr, who threatened to quit the show if Talman wasn't given a second chance. William Talman was last seen on TV in a series of anti-smoking public service announcements; these spots were run posthumously, at Talman's request, following his death from lung cancer at the age of 53.

Trivia: Stout, hearty character actor Jack Raine specialized in light comedy and dramatic roles throughout most of his career. He made his first film in 1930 and his last in 1971, seldom rising above the supporting players' ranks but always remaining busy. His better-known screen assignments included Trebonius in Joseph Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar; his Broadway credits included the short-lived 1952 production Sherlock Holmes, in which he played Dr. Watson opposite Basil Rathbone's Holmes. Married three times, Jack Raine's wives included actresses Binnie Hale and Sonia Somers.

Trivia: A descendant of one of California's pioneer families, American actor Ray Collins' interest in the theatre came naturally. His father was drama critic of the Sacramento Bee. Taking to the stage at age 14, Collins moved to British Columbia, where he briefly headed his own stock company, then went on to Broadway. An established theatre and radio performer by the mid-1930s, Collins began a rewarding association with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. He played the "world's last living radio announcer" in Welles' legendary War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938, then moved to Hollywood with the Mercury troupe in 1939. Collins made his film debut as Boss Jim Gettys in Welles' film classic Citizen Kane (1940). After the Mercury disbanded in the early 1940s, Collins kept busy as a film and stage character actor, usually playing gruff business executives. Collins is most fondly remembered by TV fans of the mid-1950s for his continuing role as the intrepid Lt. Tragg on the weekly series Perry Mason.

Trivia: Connie Cezon's main claim to fame is as a comic actress, and a romantic and slapstick foil for the Three Stooges; but it was her resemblance to Bette Davis that earned her a place (albeit uncredited) in the feature film Dead Ringer, and a mention in the actress' autobiography. Connie Cezon (whose name was often spelled "Cezan" in credits) is probably best remembered by fans of the Three Stooges for the five screen appearances she made with the trio, beginning with Corny Casanovas in 1952. Cezon proved in her onscreen run-ins with the Stooges that she could give as good as she could get, leading them to comedic ruin with her romantic wiles in the movie. In Tricky Dicks (1953), the trio's parody of Detective Story, she played a slick pickpocket, and in Hot Stuff (1956), Cezon dished out mayhem to an annoyingly flirtatious Moe Howard; and she was on the receiving end of the slapstick humor for Rusty Romeos (1957), a remake of Corny Casanovas. Born Consuelo Cezon, she trained in musical comedy and melodrama at the Pasadena Playhouse, appeared for four years in blackouts for Ken Murray, and worked in legitimate theater in Hollywood and New York. Her comedic skills brought her to the attention of playwright Moss Hart, who used her in a handful of his productions. She did variety television with Murray, and also did straight acting roles -- with some understated comedy -- in the recurring role of receptionist Gertie Lade on the classic late-'50s series Perry Mason, starring Raymond Burr. Cezon's feature-film performances have been few in number -- apart from a small role in the Jerry Lewis feature The Errand Boy (1962), her most notable big-screen appearances were as a waitress in Bruno Ve Sota's low-budget film noir The Female Jungle (1956), and serving as Bette Davis' seen-from-the-back double in Dead Ringer (1964). Her resemblance to the star was essential in making the movie -- in which Davis played identical twins -- and so impressed Davis that she later remarked that the director could have used Cezon in place of her in certain shots.

Trivia: A stage actor since the 1920s, Kenneth MacDonald found the going rough in Hollywood until he published and distributed a pamphlet titled "The Case of Kenneth MacDonald." This little self-promotional book brought him to the attention of studio executives, and throughout the 1930s MacDonald could be seen as a mustachioed, mellifluous-voiced villain in scores of westerns and melodramas. His work in the Charles Starrett westerns at Columbia led to a lengthy association with that studio. From 1940 through 1954, MacDonald played featured roles in such Columbia productions as Island of Doomed Men (1940), Power of the Whistler (1945) and The Caine Mutiny (1954); he was also prominently cast in the studio's short subjects, especially in the comedies of the Three Stooges and Hugh Herbert, his most familiar role being that of a society criminal or shyster lawyer. During the 1960s, Kenneth MacDonald was a semi-regular on the Perry Mason TV series, playing a solemn judge.

Trivia: Following his screen debut in 1949's Twelve O'Clock High, Richard Anderson was groomed for stardom at MGM. His stature in Hollywood seemed assured when he married the daughter of former MGM luminary Norma Shearer. But Anderson was -- by his own admission -- a less-than-noble figure in his younger days, losing both prestige and several plum film roles through his arrogance, his explosive temper, and his after-hours carousing. A kinder, mellower Richard Anderson resurfaced on television in the 1970s, gaining a modest but loyal fan following thanks to his weekly appearances as Oscar Goldman in The Six Million Dollar Man. Anderson also played Goldman on the spin-off series The Bionic Woman -- the result being that, for several years in the mid-1970s, he was simultaneously co-starring on two different TV series in the same role. Richard Anderson's additional TV-series stints included Mama Rosa (1950), Bus Stop (1961), Dan August (1970), Cover-Up (1984) and Dynasty (1986-87 season).

Trivia: Hank Patterson is best known to audiences for his portrayal of farmer Fred Ziffel on Green Acres -- for five seasons, his laconic character and the antics of his pig Arnold helped make life hopelessly confusing for series protagonist Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert). Patterson, along with his younger contemporary Arthur Hunnicutt, was one of a handful of character actors who cornered the market on portraying cantankerous old coots, usually in a rural setting, in movies and on television during the middle of the 20th century. With his deep, resonant voice, which could project even when he spoke in the softest tones, Patterson could also evoke menace and doom, an attribute that producers and directors sometimes utilized to great effect on programs like Twilight Zone. He was born Elmer Calvin Patterson in Springville, AL, in 1888, but by the 1890s his family had moved to Texas, and Patterson spent most of his boyhood in the town of Taylor. His main interest was music, and he studied in hope of a serious performing career, but was forced to enter showbusiness as a vaudeville pianist, playing with traveling shows. By the end of the 1920s, he'd made his way to California, and he entered the movie business as an actor -- despite his lack of formal training -- during the 1930s. Patterson's earliest identified screen work was an uncredited appearance in the Roy Rogers Western The Arizona Kid (1939). His first credited screen role was in the drama I Ring Doorbells, made at Producers Releasing Corporation. Patterson spent the next nine years working exclusively in Westerns, starting with Thomas Carr's The El Paso Kid, starring Sunset Carson. Among the best of the oaters that Patterson worked in were Edwin L. Marin's Abilene Town and Henry King's The Gunfighter, but most of the pictures that he did were on the low-budget side, and far less prestigious. He played a succession of blacksmiths, hotel clerks, farmers, shopkeepers, and other townsmen, usually bit roles and character parts. Beginning with Jack Arnold's Tarantula, Patterson moved into occasional modern character portrayals as well. Patterson also appeared on dozens of television series, ranging from The Abbott & Costello Show (where he played a very creepy mugger in "Lou Falls for Ruby") to Perry Mason. He was nearly as ubiquitous a figure on Twilight Zone as he was in any Western series, appearing in at least three installments, most notably as an old man in a modern setting in "Kick the Can," and as an ominous general store proprietor in "Come Wander With Me." It was the 19th century and rural settings, however, that provided his bread and butter -- he had appeared in several episodes of Gunsmoke, and in 1963 became a continuing character on the series in the role of Hank Miller, the Dodge City stableman. That same year, Patterson took on the semi-regular role of farmer Fred Ziffel in the rural comedy Petticoat Junction; and in 1965, that role was expanded into the series Green Acres -- eventually, he even portrayed Fred Ziffel in episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies as well. The association of his character with the utterly surreal (and extremely popular) porcine character of Arnold the Pig (also known as Arnold Ziffel) ensured that Patterson was one of the most visible supporting players on the series. Ironically, by the time he was doing Green Acres, Patterson was almost completely deaf, but the producers loved his portrayal so much, that they worked around this by having the dialogue coach lying on the floor out-of-shot, tapping at his leg with a yardstick when it was his cue to speak a line. Patterson passed away in 1975 of bronchial pneumonia at the age of 86. He was the great-uncle of actress Tea Leoni.

Trivia: Throughout Hollywood's golden age and TV's "typecasting" era of the '50s and '60s, there would always be a demand for American actor Dan Tobin. After all, somebody had to play all those stuffed-shirt executives, snotty desk clerks, officious male secretaries, tight-fisted bankers and tuxedoed, mustachioed stiffs to whom the heroine was unhappily engaged before the hero came along. Tobin was a welcome if slightly pompous presence in such films as Woman of the Year (1941), Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer (1947) The Big Clock (1948) and The Love Bug Rides Again (1973). On television, Tobin had semiregular stints on I Married Joan, My Favorite Husband and Perry Mason, as well as innumerable guest bits on sitcoms and anthologies. Dan Tobin was also a frustrated screenwriter, at least according to scenarist George Clayton Johnson; while working together on a 1960 episode of Twilight Zone, Tobin cornered Johnson and described his concept for a fantasy script about a gambler who could read his opponent's minds -- a talent which failed when he came up against an opponent who couldn't speak English!

Trivia: The son of circus performers, the diminutive Frankie Darro began appearing in films as a juvenile player in 1924; he co-starred with western star Tom Tyler in several silent oaters at FBO in the mid-1920s, and was cast in leading roles in Little Mickey Grogan (1927) and The Circus Kid (1928). During the 1930s, Darro showed up in innumerable bit and supporting roles, often playing juvenile delinquents; he carried over this particular characterization into his voiceover stint as Lampwick in the 1940 animated Disney feature Pinocchio. He was given star billing at such minor-league studios as Ambassador and Monogram, co-starring with black comedian Mantan Moreland at the latter studio in an enjoyable series of action programmers, often cast as a jockey because of his stature. In the late 1940s, Darro was a frequent stunt double for such pint-sized actors as Leo Gorcey. Frankie Darro was compelled to accept bit roles into the 1960s; he was also featured in several Red Skelton Shows of the period, often dressed as an old woman for a peculiar comic effect.

Trivia: Georgia-born Joanna Moore spent two decades of her life in acting, a profession that she claimed never to have really wished to pursue. And across that time she got to play a couple of highly visible parts in important movies: she was the daughter of the murder victim whose killing starts the action in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958) and was the learning-disabled prostitute in Edward Dmytryk's A Walk on the Wild Side (1962). But despite those two stand-out credits and movie-star looks, she had the misfortune to have come along too late to make a lasting impression. Born Dorothy Cook in Americus, GA, in 1934, she didn't begin her screen acting career until the mid-'50s, a point where television had started to overwhelm the movie business, leaving no more room for studios to develop young talent. As a result, as beautiful as she was, Moore spent most of her career on the small screen, on anthology shows such as Lux Video Theater, or doing one-shot appearances on The Rifleman, Riverboat, Adventures in Paradise, and the countless other dramatic series that filled the home screen. She took what there was in feature film work, the dubious (Monster on the Campus) and the good (The Last Angry Man), but following Walk on the Wild Side, her best opportunities came from Elvis Presley (Follow That Dream), and the Disney organization, which memorably cast her as femme fatale Desiree de la Roche in Son of Flubber (1963). She did work in some better quality dramatic series, such as Route 66 and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but her best career opportunity seems to have come along in 1963, when Moore was cast as Peggy MacMillan, the new love interest for Sheriff Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) on The Andy Griffith Show, but that proved to be only a four-episode gig. It did allow her to show off her range in comedy as well as drama, however, and even to sing the folk song "Down in the Valley" in one show, and it became the screen role for which she may be best remembered.Moore married actor Ryan O'Neal that same year, and became much better known in the press from that personal union than for any of her screen work; O'Neal's sudden rise to fame with the advent of the series Peyton Place in 1964 made them one of the most visible (and attractive) young couples in Hollywood during the mid-'60s. Moore kept very busy during this period, working in episodes of everything from My Three Sons to Gunsmoke, and she even turned up on Peyton Place in 1966. By 1967, however, the marriage -- which produced two children, Tatum O'Neal and Griffin O'Neal -- had ended in divorce. By the end of the 1960s, Moore's personal life had begun falling apart, and she lost custody of both children owing to substance abuse problems. She was still extremely busy, however, appearing in Robert Altman's 1968 space-exploration feature film drama Countdown, as well as sitcoms (The Governor and J.J.) and television dramas (Judd for the Defense) right into 1970. After that, her appearances became much more sporadic, and it was said that Moore was living a post-hippie lifestyle on various communes when she wasn't working in episodes of Kung Fu or making a rare feature film appearance in Robert Wise's The Hindenburg (1975), where she was almost lost amid the all-star cast of the gargantuan disaster movie. She made two on-screen appearances in the 1980s, but otherwise had been unseen in the 20 years before her death in 1997.

Trivia: More familiar for his radio work than his film appearances, American actor Ben Wright was active professionally from the early '40s. Dialects were a specialty with Wright, as witness his two-year hitch as Chinese bellhop Hey Boy on the radio version of Have Gun Will Travel. Most of Wright's film roles were supporting or bit appearances in such productions as A Man Called Peter (1955), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), and The Fortune Cookie (1964). On TV, Wright was one of Jack Webb's stock company (including fellow radio veterans Virginia Gregg, Stacy Harris, and Vic Perrin) on the '60s version of Dragnet. Ben Wright's most frequently seen film appearance was as the humorless Nazi functionary Herr Zeller in the 1965 megahit The Sound of Music.