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Martin Henry Balsam was born on November 4, 1919 in the Bronx, New York City, to Lillian (Weinstein) and Albert Balsam, a manufacturer of women's sportswear. He was the first-born child. His father was a Russian Jewish immigrant, and his mother was born in New York, to Russian Jewish parents. Martin caught the acting bug in high school where he participated in the drama club. After high school, he continued his interest in acting by attending Manhattan's progressive New School. When World War II broke out, Martin was called to service in his early twenties. After the war, he was lucky to secure a position as an usher at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. By 1947, he was honing his craft at the Actors Studio, run at that time by Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg. His time at the Actors Studio in New York City allowed him training in the famous Stanislavsky method. Despite his excellent training, he had to prove himself, just like any up and coming young actor. He began on Broadway in the late 1940s. But, it was not until 1951 that he experienced real success. That play was Tennessee Williams' "The Rose Tattoo". After his Broadway success, he had a few minor television roles before his big break arrived when he joined the cast of On the Waterfront (1954). In the 1950s, Martin had many television roles. He had recurring roles on some of the most popular television series of that time, including The United States Steel Hour (1953), The Philco Television Playhouse (1948), Goodyear Playhouse (1951) and Studio One (1948). In 1957, he was able to prove himself on the big-screen once again, with a prominent role in 12 Angry Men (1957), directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Henry Fonda. All of Martin's television work in the 1950s did not go to waste. While starring on an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), Hitchcock was so impressed by his work, that he offered him a key supporting role of Detective Milton Arbogast in Psycho (1960). His work with Hitchcock opened him up to a world of other acting opportunities. Many strong movie roles came his way in the 1960s, including parts in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Cape Fear (1962) and The Carpetbaggers (1964). One of the proudest moments in his life was when he received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for A Thousand Clowns (1965). It was soon after that he began accepting roles in European movies. He soon developed a love for Italy, and lived there most of his remaining years. He acted in over a dozen Italian movies and spent his later life traveling between Hollywood and Europe for his many roles. After a career that spanned more than fifty years, Martin Balsam died of natural causes in his beloved Italy at age 76. He passed away of a stroke at a hotel in Rome called Residenza di Repetta. He was survived by his third wife Irene Miller and three children, Adam, Zoe and Talia.

Balding, quietly spoken, of slight build and possessed of piercing blue eyes -- often peering out from behind round, steel-rimmed glasses -- Donald Pleasence had the essential physical attributes which make a great screen villain. In the course of his lengthy career, he relished playing the obsessed, the paranoid and the purely evil. Even the Van Helsing-like psychiatrist Sam Loomis in the Halloween (1978) franchise seems only marginally more balanced than his prey. An actor of great intensity, Pleasence excelled on stage as Shakespearean villains. He was an unrelenting prosecutor in Jean Anouilh's "Poor Bitos" and made his theatrical reputation in the title role of the seedy, scheming tramp in Harold Pinter's "The Caretaker" (1960). On screen, he gave a perfectly plausible interpretation of the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, in The Eagle Has Landed (1976). He was a convincingly devious Thomas Cromwell in Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972), disturbing in his portrayal of the crazed, bloodthirsty preacher Quint in Will Penny (1967); and as sexually depraved, alcohol-sodden 'Doc' Tydon in the brilliant Aussie outback drama Wake in Fright (1971). And, of course, he was Ernst Stavro Blofeld in You Only Live Twice (1967). These are some of the films, for which we may remember Pleasence, but there was a great deal more to this fabulous, multi-faceted actor.

Donald Henry Pleasence was born on October 5, 1919 in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, England, to Alice (Armitage) and Thomas Stanley Pleasence. His family worked on the railway. His grandfather had been a signal man and both his brother and father were station masters. When Donald failed to get a scholarship at RADA, he joined the family occupation working as a clerk at his father's station before becoming station master at Swinton, Yorkshire. While there, he wrote letters to theatre companies, eventually being accepted by one on the island of Jersey in Spring 1939 as an assistant stage manager. On the eve of World War II, he made his theatrical debut in "Wuthering Heights". In 1942, he played Curio in "Twelfth Night", but his career was then interrupted by military service in the RAF. He was shot down over France, incarcerated and tortured in a German POW camp. Once repatriated, Donald returned to the stage in Peter Brook's 1946 London production of "The Brothers Karamazov" with Alec Guinness although he missed the opening due to measles, followed by a stint on Broadway with Laurence Olivier's touring company in "Caesar and Cleopatra" and "Anthony and Cleopatra". Upon his return to England, he won critical plaudits for his performance in "Hobson's Choice". In 1952, Donald began his screen career, rather unobtrusively, in small parts. He was only really noticed once having found his métier as dastardly, sneaky Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955). It took several more years, until international recognition came his way: first, through the filmed adaptation of The Guest (1963), and, secondly, with his blind forger in The Great Escape (1963), a role he imbued with added conviction due to his own wartime experience.

Some of his best acting Donald reserved for the small screen. In 1962, the producer of The Twilight Zone (1959), Buck Houghton, brought Donald to the United States ("damn the expense"!) to guest star in the third-season episode "The Changing of the Guard". He was given a mere five days to immerse himself in the part of a gentle school teacher, Professor Ellis Fowler, who, on the eve of Christmas is forcibly retired after fifty-one years of teaching. Devastated, and believing himself a failure who has made no mark on the world, he is about to commit suicide when the school's bell summons him to his classroom. There, he is confronted by the spirits of deceased students who beg him to consider that his lessons have indeed had fundamental effects on their lives, even leading to acts of great heroism. Upon hearing this, Fowler is now content to graciously accept his retirement. Managing to avoid maudlin sentimentality, Donald's performance was intuitive and, arguably, one of the most poignant ever accomplished in a thirty-minute television episode. Once again, against type, he was equally delightful as the mild-mannered Reverend Septimus Harding in Anthony Trollope's The Barchester Chronicles (1982).

Whether eccentric, sinister or given to pathos, Donald Pleasence was always great value for money and his performances have rarely failed to engage.

Jack Palance quite often exemplified evil incarnate on film, portraying some of the most intensely feral villains witnessed in 1950s westerns and melodrama. Enhanced by his tall, powerful build, icy voice, and piercing eyes, he earned two "Best Supporting Actor" nominations early in his career. It would take a grizzled, eccentric comic performance 40 years later, however, for him to finally grab the coveted statuette.

Of Ukrainian descent, Palance was born Volodymyr Ivanovich Palahniuk (later taking Walter Jack Palance as his legal name) on February 18, 1919 (although some sources, including his death certificate, cite 1920) in Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania (coal country), one of six children born to Anna (nee Gramiak) and Ivan Palahniuk. His father, an anthracite miner, died of black lung disease. Palance worked in the mines in his early years but averted the same fate as his father. Athletics was his ticket out of the mines when he won a football scholarship to the University of North Carolina. He subsequently dropped out to try his hand at professional boxing. Fighting under the name "Jack Brazzo", he won his first 15 fights, 12 by knockout, before losing a 4th round decision to future heavyweight contender Joe Baksi on December 17, 1940.

With the outbreak of World War II, his boxing career ended and his military career began, serving in the Army Air Force as a bomber pilot. Wounded in combat and suffering severe injuries and burns, he received the Purple Heart, Good Conduct Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal. He resumed college studies as a journalist at Stanford University and became a sportswriter for the San Francisco Chronicle. He also worked for a radio station until he was bit by the acting bug.

Palance made his stage debut in "The Big Two" in 1947 and immediately followed it understudying Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in the groundbreaking Broadway classic "A Streetcar Named Desire", a role he eventually took over. Following stage parts in "Temporary Island" (1948), "The Vigil" (1948), and "The Silver Tassle" (1949), Palance won a choice role in "Darkness of Noon" and a Theatre World Award for "Promising New Personality." This recognition helped him secure a 20th Century-Fox contract. The facial burns and resulting reconstructive surgery following the crash and burn of his WWII bomber plane actually worked to his advantage. Out of contention as a glossy romantic leading man, Palance instead became the archetypal intimidating villain equipped with towering stance, imposing glare, and killer-shark smile.

He stood out among a powerhouse cast that included actors such as Richard Widmark, Zero Mostel and Paul Douglas in his movie debut in Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets (1950), as a plague-carrying fugitive. He was soon on his way. Briefly billed as Walter Jack Palance before eliminating the first name, the actor made fine use of his former boxing skills and war experience for the film Halls of Montezuma (1951) as a boxing Marine in Richard Widmark's platoon. He followed this with the first of his back-to-back Oscar nods. In Sudden Fear (1952), only his third film, he played rich-and-famous playwright Joan Crawford's struggling actor/husband who plots to murder her and run off with gorgeous Gloria Grahame. Finding just the right degree of intensity and menace to pretty much steal the proceedings without chewing the scenery, he followed this with arguably his finest villain of the decade, that of sadistic gunslinger Jack Wilson who takes on Alan Ladd's titular hero, played by Shane (1953), in a classic showdown.

Throughout the 1950s, Palance doled out strong leads and supports such as those in Man in the Attic (1953) (his first lead), The Big Knife (1955) and the war classic Attack (1956). Mixed in were a few routine to highly mediocre parts in Flight to Tangier (1953), Sign of the Pagan (1954) (as Attila the Hun), and the biblical bomb The Silver Chalice (1954). In between filmmaking were a host of television roles, none better than his down-and-out boxer in Requiem for a Heavyweight (1956), a rare sympathetic role that earned him an Emmy Award.

Back and forth overseas in the 1960s and 1970s, Palance would dominate foreign pictures in a number of different genres -- sandal-and-spear spectacles, biblical epics, war stories and "spaghetti westerns." Such films included The Battle of Austerlitz (1960), The Mongols (1961), Barabbas (1961), Night Train to Milan (1962), Contempt (1963), The Mercenary (1968), Marquis de Sade's Justine (1969), The Desperados (1969), It Can Be Done Amigo (1972), Chato's Land (1972), Blood and Bullets (1976), Welcome to Blood City (1977). Back home, he played Fidel Castro in Che! (1969) while also appearing in Monte Walsh (1970), Oklahoma Crude (1972) and The Four Deuces (1975).

On the made-for-television front, Jack played a number of nefarious nasties to perfection, ranging from Mr. Hyde (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1968)) to Dracula in Dracula (1974) to Ebenezer Scrooge in a "Wild West" version of the Dickens classic Ebenezer (1998). He also played one of the Hatfields in The Hatfields and the McCoys (1975). Jack switched gears to star as a "nice guy" lieutenant in the single-season TV cop drama Bronk (1975). In later years, the actor mellowed with age, as exemplified by roles in Bagdad Cafe (1987), but could still display his bad side as he did as an evil rancher, crime boss or drug lord in, respectively, Young Guns (1988), Batman (1989) and Tango & Cash (1989). Into his twilight years he showed a penchant for brash, quirky comedy capped by his Oscar-winning role in City Slickers (1991) and its sequel. He ended his film career playing Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1999).

His three children by his first wife, actress Virginia Baker -- Holly Palance, Brooke Palance, and Cody Palance -- all pursued acting careers and appeared with their father at one time or another. A man of few words off the set, he owned his own cattle ranch and displayed other creative sides as a exhibited painter and published poet.

His last years were marred by both failing health and the 1998 death of his son Cody from melanoma. He was later diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died at the Santa Barbara County home of his daughter, Holly Palance, in 2006.

Slim Pickens spent the early part of his career as a real cowboy and the latter part playing cowboys, and he is best remembered for a single "cowboy" image: that of bomber pilot Maj. "King" Kong waving his cowboy hat rodeo-style as he rides a nuclear bomb onto its target in the great black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Born in Kingsburg, near Fresno in California's Central Valley, he spent much of his boyhood in nearby Hanford, where he began rodeoing at the age of 12. Over the next two decades he toured the country on the rodeo circuit, becoming a highly-paid and well-respected rodeo clown, a job that entailed enormous danger. In 1950, at the age of 31, Slim married Margaret Elizabeth Harmon and that same year he was given a role in a western, Rocky Mountain (1950). He quickly found a niche in both comic and villainous roles in that genre. With his hoarse voice and pronounced western twang, he was not always easy to cast outside the genre, but when he was, as in "Dr. Strangelove", the results were often memorable. He died in 1983 after a long and courageous battle against a brain tumor. He was survived by his wife Margaret and children.

Eva Gabor was born on February 11, 1919 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), a soldier. Her older siblings were Magda Gabor, an actress, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, an actress and socialite. Her parents were both from Jewish families. She went to Hollywood, California, to act in the 1930s. Her mother escaped from Nazi-occupied Budapest in the 1940s, also settling in the U.S.

Eva appeared both in films and on Broadway in the 1950s, as well as in several "A"-movies, including The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), starring Elizabeth Taylor, and Artists and Models (1955), which featured Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

In 1953, she was given her own television talk show, The Eva Gabor Show (1953). Throughout the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, she appeared on television and in movies. She appeared on one episode of the mystery series Justice (1954), and was on the game show What's My Line? (1950) as the "mystery challenger". Her film appearances during this period include a remake of My Man Godfrey (1957), Gigi (1958) and It Started with a Kiss (1959).

However, she is best remembered as Lisa Douglas, the socialite turned farm wife on Green Acres (1965) with co-star Eddie Albert playing her attorney husband Oliver Wendell Douglas. Eva Gabor died at age 76 from respiratory failure and pneumonia on July 4, 1995 in Los Angeles, California.

Marie Windsor (born Emily Marie Bertelsen) was born in Marysvale, Utah, and attended Brigham Young University. She trained for the stage under Maria Ouspenskaya before she began playing leading roles in B pictures in the late 1940s. So many B films in fact, that she garnered the title of 'Queen of the Bs'.

She was a talent - to paraphrase a cliché - of the right type and the right time. If film noir could have manufactured an archetype, it would most definitely have been Marie.

With Ms. Windsor's bedroom eyes ('they didn't fit for a 'goody-goody wife, or a nice little girlfriend') she smoldered on screens, in scenes with John Garfield and many others, in some of her best work. Marie's femme fatale (Ms. Windsor was later quoted as saying a femme fatale is '...usually the woman who gets the man into bed... then into trouble') was on screen, most notably her role as the manipulative, double-crossing wife of Elisha Cook Jr. in The Killing (1956) (which earned her "Look" magazine's Best Supporting Actress award).

Marie later said she loved playing them because they're '... the type of character audiences never forget'.

Some of her favorite film roles, in addition to The Killing, were The Narrow Margin (1952) and Hellfire (1949).

Marie was married twice before she met Jack Hupp, a realtor with whom she had a son. After retiring from films, Marie took up sculpting and painting.

Marie passed away one day before her 81st birthday. She's interred with her husband in her hometown.

Marie said audiences 'loved to hate her', but this is only partially true; audiences loved Ms. Windsor for the dynamism she portrayed, and as film noir gains new fans every day - more than ¾ of a century since its heyday - it's a love affair which shows no signs of abating.

Legendary Hollywood "tough guy", on screen and off. Remembered as the title character in Dillinger (1945) and as the consummately brutal lover of Claire Trevor in Born to Kill (1947). Notorious for his frequent, well-publicized barroom brawls and the like, including being stabbed in 1973. In his later years, he continued as a screen actor projecting the hard-as-nails mien that has been ingrained since his younger days, as evidenced in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992).

One of the world's most underrated Academy Award-winning actresses, Jennifer Jones was born Phylis Lee Isley on 2 March 1919 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Flora Mae (Suber) and Phillip Ross Isley, who ran a travelling stage show. As a young aspiring actress, she met and fell for young, handsome, aspiring actor Robert Walker. They soon married, and moved to Chicago in order to fulfill their dreams of becoming film stars. Though their plans (initially) fell through, Phyllis began working as a model; sporting mainly hats, gloves and jewelry, and also occasionally found some work on local radio stations, where she provided the voice for various characters in radio programmes, along with her husband.

In a last-ditch attempt to pursue her dream, Phyllis traveled to Selznick studios for a reading which would ultimately change her life. It was that day where she met David O. Selznick, and after that, her career began to take shape. Initially, Phyllis thought the audition went terribly and stormed out of the studios in tears, only to be chased by Selznick, who assured her she had been fine. Although she didn't get that particular part (which was for the iconic character, Scarlett O'Hara, which would ultimately go to Vivien Leigh, in one of the most famous castings in Hollywood's history), Phyllis was given a contract with Selznick studios. In short order, Phyllis was 'renamed' to the alliterative Jennifer Jones, and was cast over thousands of other hopefuls in the role of Bernadette Soubirous in The Song of Bernadette (1943).

For her moving portrayal of the sickly teenager who sees a vision of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes and devotes her life to her by becoming a nun, Jones won the Academy Award for best actress in a leading role on 2 March 1944 (coincidentally her 25th birthday) beating out stiff competition such as Ingrid Bergman (who later became a close friend of hers), Greer Garson, Joan Fontaine and Jean Arthur.

Now, considered a 'true' star, Jones' career was marked out and moulded for her by Selznick, who would become the love of her life. They began an affair and eventually she left her husband and two sons for the producer, which ultimately led Walker to an untimely death, attributed to alcohol and drug abuse instigated due to their separation. As for her career, Jones took on the supporting role of Jane Hilton, a headstrong teenage girl who grows up fast when her fiance is killed in action during WWII, in Since You Went Away (1944). For her performance Jones received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination, but lost out to Ethel Barrymore for None But the Lonely Heart (1944). Jennifer continued to deliver strong performances, receiving further best actress Oscar nominations for Love Letters (1945) (she lost to Joan Crawford for Mildred Pierce (1945)) and Duel in the Sun (1946), (she lost to Olivia de Havilland for To Each His Own (1946)) which saw her cast against type as the seductive biracial beauty Pearl Chavez.

Jones continued to produce memorable performances throughout the 1940s , including Portrait of Jennie (1948). In the 1950s she received her fifth and final Oscar nomination for Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), losing out to Anna Magnani for The Rose Tattoo (1955).

Despite her success within the film industry, Jones was a very private person and managed to stay out of the spotlight that dominated so many other performers' lives. But a lack of publicity led to a lack of roles, a trend that amplified when Selznick died in 1965. She appeared in fewer and fewer films, and after a moderately successful supporting performance in The Towering Inferno (1974) Jones decided to make that role her swan song, bowing out of the film industry. She did, however, try to revive her film career in later years by campaigning for the role of Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment (1983), but Shirley MacLaine was cast instead and as a result, won the Oscar for best actress.

Jennifer Jones died 17 December, 2009, in Malibu, California. In the 21st century, Jones may not be as well known as other actresses of her time such as Ingrid Bergman, Katharine Hepburn, Greer Garson, Bette Davis etc. But for those who know of her and her extraordinary talent, she is alluring to watch and her acting abilities extended far greater than most of her contemporaries.

Forrest Tucker, best known to the Baby Boom generation as Sergeant O'Rourke on the classic TV sitcom F Troop (1965), was born on February 12, 1919, in Plainfield, Indiana. He began his performing career at age 14 at the 1933 Chicago "Century of Progress" World's Fair, pushing big wicker tourists' chairs by day and singing at night. His family moved to Arlington, Virginia, where he attended Washington-Lee High School in 1938.

Big for his age, as a youth Tucker was hired by the Old Gayety Burlesque Theater in Washington, DC, to serve as a Master of Ceremonies for the burly-cue after consecutively winning Saturday night amateur contests. He was fired when it was found out that he was underage. When he turned 18, he was rehired by the Old Gayety.

After graduating from high school in 1938, the 6'4", 200-lb. Tucker played semi-pro football in the Washington, DC, area. He also enlisted in the National Guard and was assigned to a cavalry unit in Ft. Myers, Virginia. He started at the top when he entered the movies, in a supporting role in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940) opposite Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan, who won his third Oscar for portraying Judge Roy Bean in the picture. He got the role during his 1939 vacation from the Old Gayety, which shut down due to the District of Columbia's horrible summers in the days before air conditioning was common.He was signed to the part in the Wyler picture, which required a big fellow with enough presence for a fight scene with the 6'3" superstar Cooper.

Tucker moved to California and began auditioning for parts in films. After "The Westerner", it was off to Poverty Row, where he appeared in William Beaudine's Emergency Landing (1941) at rock-bottom PRC (Producers Releasing Corp.). He was soon signed by Columbia and assigned to the B-pictures unit, though he was lent to MGM for the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn vehicle Keeper of the Flame (1942), his last film before going off to World War II.

Tucker served as an enlisted man in the Army during the war, being discharged as a second lieutenant in 1945. He returned to Columbia and resumed his acting career with an appearance in the classic film The Yearling (1946). He signed with Republic Pictures in 1948, which brought him one of his greatest roles, that of the Marine corporal bearing a grudge against gung-ho sergeant John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). At Republic Tucker was top-billed in many of the "B' pictures in the action and western genres the studio was famous for, such as Rock Island Trail (1950), California Passage (1950) and Ride the Man Down (1952), among many others. In 1958 he broke out of action / western pictures and played Beauregard Burnside to Rosalind Russell's Auntie Mame (1958), the highest grossing US film of the year. It showed that Tucker was capable of performing in light comedy.

Morton DaCosta, his director on "Auntie Mame", cast Tucker as "Professor" Harold Hill in the national touring production of The Music Man (1962), and he was a more than credible substitute for the great Broadway star Robert Preston, who originated the role. Tucker made 2,008 appearances in The Music Man over the next five years, then starred in "Fair Game for Lovers" on Broadway in 1964.

However, it was television that provided Tucker with his most famous role: scheming cavalry sergeant Morgan O'Rourke in "F Troop", which ran from 1965 to 1967 on ABC. Ably supported by Larry Storch, Ken Berry and James Hampton, Tucker showed a flair for comedy and he and Storch had great chemistry, but the series was canceled after only two seasons. It has, however, remained in syndication ever since.

Following "F Troop", Tucker returned to films in supporting parts (having a good turn as the villain in the John Wayne western Chisum (1970)) and character leads (The Wild McCullochs (1975)). On television he was a regular on three series: Dusty's Trail (1973) with Bob Denver; The Ghost Busters (1975), which reunited him with Larry Storch; and Filthy Rich (1982). Tucker was also a frequent guest star on TV, with many appearances on Gunsmoke (1955) and in the recurring role of Jarvis Castleberry, Flo's estranged father, on Alice (1976) and its spin-off, Flo (1980). He continued to be active on stage as well, starring in the national productions of Plaza Suite (1971), Show Boat (1936), and That Championship Season (1982). He also toured with Roy Radin's Vaudeville Revue, a variety show in which, as a headliner, he told Irish stories and jokes and sang Irish songs.

Tucker returned to the big screen after an absence of several years in 1986, playing hero trucker Charlie Morrison in the action film Thunder Run (1985). His comeback to features was short-lived, however, as he died on October 25, 1986, in the Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills, of complications from lung cancer and emphysema. He was 67 years old. Tucker was buried in Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Howard Keel was the Errol Flynn and Clark Gable of "golden age" movie musicals back in the 1950s. With a barrel-chested swagger and cocky, confident air, the 6'4" brawny baritone Keel had MGM's loveliest songbirds swooning helplessly for over a decade in what were some of the finest musical films ever produced.

Born Harry (or Harold) Clifford Keel in Gillespie, Illinois, in 1919 to Homer Charles Keel and Grace (Osterkamp) Keel, and the brother of Frederick William Keel, his childhood was unhappy, his father being a hard-drinking coal miner and his mother a stern, repressed Methodist homemaker. When Keel was 11 his father died, and the family moved to California. He later earned his living as a car mechanic, then found work during WWII at Douglas Aircraft in Los Angeles. His naturally untrained voice was discovered by the staff of his aircraft company and soon he was performing at various entertainments for the company's clients. He was inspired to sing professionally one day while attending a Hollywood Bowl concert, and quickly advanced through the musical ranks from singing waiter to music festival contest winner to guest recitalist.

Oscar Hammerstein II discovered Keel in 1946 during John Raitt's understudy auditions for the role of Billy Bigelow in Broadway's popular musical "Carousel." He was cast on sight and the die was cast. Keel managed to understudy Alfred Drake as Curly in "Oklahoma!" as well, and in 1947 took over the rustic lead in the London production, earning great success. British audiences took to the charismatic singer and he remained there as a concert singer while making a non-singing film debut in the British crime drama The Hideout (1948) (aka "The Small Voice"). MGM was looking for an answer to Warner Bros.' Gordon MacRae when they came upon Keel in England. They made a great pitch for him and he returned to the US, changing his stage moniker to Howard Keel. He became a star with his very first musical, playing sharpshooter Frank Butler opposite brassy Betty Hutton's Annie Oakley in the film version of the Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun (1950). From then on Keel was showcased in several of MGM's biggest extravaganzas, with Show Boat (1951), Calamity Jane (1953), Kiss Me Kate (1953) and (reportedly his favorite) Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) at the top of the list. Kismet (1955) opposite Ann Blyth would be his last, as the passion for movie musicals ran its course.

Keel managed to move into rugged (if routine) action fare, appearing in such 1960s films as Armored Command (1961), Waco (1966), Red Tomahawk (1966) and The War Wagon (1967), the last one starring John Wayne and featuring Keel as a wisecracking Indian, of all things. In the 1970s Keel kept his singing voice alive by returning full force to his musical roots. Some of his summer stock and touring productions, which included "Camelot," "South Pacific", "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", "Man of La Mancha", and "Show Boat", often reunited him with his former MGM leading ladies, including Kathryn Grayson and Jane Powell. He also worked up a Las Vegas nightclub act with Grayson in the 1970s.

Keel became an unexpected TV household name when he replaced Jim Davis as the upstanding family patriarch of the nighttime soap drama Dallas (1978) after Davis' untimely death. As Clayton Farlow, Miss Ellie's second husband, he enjoyed a decade of steady work. In later years he continued to appear in concerts. As a result of this renewed fame on TV, Keel landed his first solo recording contract with "And I Love You So" in 1983. Married three times, he died in 2004 of colon cancer, survived immediately by his third wife, three daughters and one son.

Cute, tiny, and prolific little old lady character actress Frances Bay worked constantly in both films and TV shows alike after making her debut at the age of 59 in life with a small part in the comedy Foul Play (1978) in 1978.

She frequently portrayed eccentric elderly women and good-hearted grandmothers in all kinds of pictures and television programs. Frances acted several times for David Lynch: she's Kyle MacLachlan's sweet doddery aunt in Blue Velvet (1986), a gruff, profane whorehouse madam in Wild at Heart (1990), and the spooky Mrs. Tremond in the cult TV series Twin Peaks (1990) and its spin-off feature Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). Frances popped up in two movies for director Stuart Gordon: she's a kind witch in The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) and a fortune teller in Edmond (2005).

Other notable film roles include a snippy librarian in The Attic (1980), a mysterious blind nun in the offbeat Nomads (1986), another librarian in In the Mouth of Madness (1994), and Adam Sandler's loving grandmother in the hit comedy Happy Gilmore (1996). Frances had the unique distinction of guesting on the final episodes of the TV shows Happy Days (1974), Who's the Boss? (1984), and Seinfeld (1989).

Among the many TV series Bay had guest spots on are Charmed (1998), ER (1994), Matlock (1986), The X-Files (1993), Murder, She Wrote (1984), The Commish (1991), L.A. Law (1986), Hill Street Blues (1981), Touched by an Angel (1994), The Golden Girls (1985), and Amazing Stories (1985).

She won a Gemini Award for her performance in the Disney TV program Avonlea (1990). Frances was also in the music video for Jimmy Fallon's "Idiot Boyfriend." In addition to her substantial movie and TV credits, Bay also acted in both Off-Broadway stage productions and regional theater; these plays include "Finnegan's Wake," "Grease," "Genuis," "The Caucasion Chalk Circle," "Number Our Days," "Uncommon Women," "Sarcophagus," and "The Pleasure of His Company." Frances won two DramaLogue Awards and was nominated for a Los Angeles Dramatic Critics' Award.

In 2002 Bay was the unfortunate victim of an automobile accident which resulted in having part of her right leg amputated. Her husband Charles sadly died in 2002 as well.

In real life Frances Bay was a very practical and unassuming woman with an avid love for jazz music.

Although Red Buttons is best known as a stand-up comic, he is also a successful songwriter, an Academy Award-winning actor (and has been nominated for two Golden Globe awards) and an accomplished singer. Born Aaron Chwatt in New York City's Lower East Side, Buttons (who got his name from a uniform he wore while working as a singing bellhop) started his show-business career singing on street corners as a child. At 16 he got a job as part of a comedy act playing the famed Catskills resort area in upstate New York (his partner was future actor Robert Alda). Buttons worked the burlesque circuit as a comic and even landed a role in a Broadway play, "Vicki", in 1942. He soon joined the U.S. Marine Corps, and in 1943 was picked for a role in Moss Hart's service play "Winged Victory" on Broadway, and soon afterwards journeyed to Hollywood to make the film version. After his discharge from the service he returned to Broadway, both in plays and as a comic with several big-band orchestras. He was successful enough that he got his own TV series, The Red Buttons Show (1952), on CBS. It lasted three years and won Buttons an Emmy for Best Comedian. He worked steadily for the next several years, and in 1957 got his big film break in the drama Sayonara (1957) with Marlon Brando, in which he played an American soldier stationed in Japan who struggled against the societal and racist pressures of both American and Japanese cultures because of his love for a Japanese woman. His performance garnered him an Academy Award, and more film roles followed. He played a paratrooper in The Longest Day (1962), was nominated for a Golden Globe for Harlow (1965) and again for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). He had a part in the TV series The Double Life of Henry Phyfe (1966) and has done pretty much every kind of TV show there is, from variety to comedy to soap operas. He gained further renown in the 1970s for his appearances on the "Dean Martin Celebrity Roast" where he performed his "Never Got a Dinner" act to great acclaim. He has played Las Vegas for years, has a star on Hollywood Boulevard (corner of Hollywood and Vine) and has appeared in numerous telethons and charitable events, for which he has been honored by such organizations as the Friars Club and the City of Hope Hospital.

"Straight Shooting" -- whether skeet shooting, or portraying Eliot Ness -- Robert Stack always told it like it was, and shot straight. Born in Los Angeles, California, the younger son of James Langford Stack (1860-1928), the owner of an advertising agency, and Mary Elizabeth Modini Wood (1891-1975), he was originally named Charles Langford Modini Stack at birth by his mother but his father soon changed the name to Robert Langford Stack. (The name Robert reportedly referred to no one in particular.) His elder brother and only sibling was James Langford Stack (1916-2006).

His parents had divorced when he was one-year-old, and his mother took him to Europe when he was three. He did not learn to speak English until he was six years old. His brother, James Langford Stack Jr., stayed in the United States with their father. Young Robert spoke fluent Italian and French, but had to learn English when they returned to Los Angeles. His mother and father remarried in 1928. Robert took drama courses at USC. He was not interested in team sports, so he took up skeet shooting. In 1935, he came in second in the National Skeet Shooting Championship (held in Cleveland) and, in 1936, his 5-man team broke the standing record at the National Skeet Championships (held in St. Louis).

Stack arrived at Universal City Studios in 1939, when the movie studio (once riding high on the successes of movies such as Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931)) was in financial trouble, and looking for a superstar. That superstar was Deanna Durbin (acquired from MGM), and Stack made his screen debut as her lover in First Love (1939). At first, he did not want to listen to the makeup man who had told him, "no blond has ever made it as a leading man", and insisted on dyeing his hair black and uncurling it. That makeup man was genius and Oscar winner, Jack P. Pierce (who had done all the monsters for Universal), and Stack became a matinee idol, overnight. After two more movies, he was teamed with Durbin again, in Nice Girl? (1941). he was now a bona-fide star, but Universal was still only paying him $150 a week. For the next 10 years, Stack did Westerns, war movies and romantic comedies.

Stack had fond memories for Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), a movie produced by his friend, John Wayne, which meant 12 weeks filming in sunny Mexico. The movie had a great script; unfortunately, two bullfighters were gored while filming. There were several weeks of delays, they could not get a crew or a sound stage, until they realized that, in Mexico, it is necessary to bribe the local union; some money was passed and filming started, immediately. There were wild times, and lots of tequila. Robert became a local legend; when some Mexicans asked him what he did in the War, Robert said: "I taught machine gun." The rumor spread: "Roberto teaches chingas!" (that's Spanish for "hookers"). In 1952, he made movie history (much like Al Jolson had done in 1927, being in the first "talkie") -- he starred in Bwana Devil (1952), the first 3-D movie. This gave startling effects to the story, which was based on real-life lion attacks in Africa.

Stack attended the premiere, and recalled people's reactions to the 3-D lion scenes: "People in the audience jumped out of their seats, some even fainted." The movie broke box office records, and immediately started the demand to film more movies in 3-D (such as House of Wax (1953)). Around 1955, Robert (Hollywood's most eligible bachelor) was introduced to Rosemarie Bowe, by mutual agent Bill Shiffrin. Rosemarie had been under contract to MGM and Columbia, making such movies as Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) and The Golden Mistress (1954). The couple wed two years later and had two children: Elizabeth Stack and Charles Stack. The former perennial bachelor found out he liked being married and being a father. His onscreen fame had grown and, for Written on the Wind (1956), he received an Academy Award nomination. Unfortunately, this did not sit well with 20th-Century Fox, which had him under contract, and had lent him to Universal for this picture. His contract with Fox came to an end. Stack made the transition to the new medium that was sweeping the country: television. He delivered breakout performances in his signature role as T-man (Treasury agent) Eliot Ness on The Untouchables (1959) which, after the pilot, ran for four seasons (118 episodes). And there was also the television movie, The Scarface Mob (1959).

There were some funny behind-the-scenes anecdotes, such as this one: there is no scene which stood out more as the most potentially evil, and risky in terms of audience acceptance, as the "bacio di morte" ("kiss of death"), the Sicilian gesture whenever a Capo (Neville Brand) kissed a Mafia soldier (Frank DeKova) to send him out as an executioner. The two actors were nervous enough about this scene (two guys had never kissed on television before), but then some crewman decided to be a prankster and told each star, in private, just before filming, "look out -- your co-star likes kissing guys" (a complete deception, of course). There were some unfortunate anecdotes: Joseph Wiseman was a fine actor, but trained to work on the New York stage with props; he was not accustomed to real Hollywood sets. In a 1960 episode of "The Untouchables", Stack was supposed to take an axe and smash up a brewery. He hit a real pipe, the axe ricocheted off the metal, and cut through his Achilles tendon. "I never felt so sorry for anyone in my life", Stack commented. They wrote a role for Wiseman as a crippled, renegade chemist a few weeks later in "The Antidote", which Stack noted, "was one of our half-dozen top shows". Stack went on to do television series, such as The Name of the Game (1968) alternating lead with Gene Barry and Anthony Franciosa, then later Most Wanted (1976), and he pleasantly surprised everyone with his flair for comedies in movies like 1941 (1979) and Airplane! (1980).

Stack hosted Unsolved Mysteries (1987) and did more zany humor in Caddyshack II (1988), Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) and BASEketball (1998). He also provided the voice of the character Ultra Magnus in The Transformers: The Movie (1986). He portrayed the no-nonsense G-man Ness again in The Return of Eliot Ness (1991). Stack was being treated for prostate cancer when he died at age 84 on May 14, 2003 at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, after suffering a heart attack.

Born in 1919 in Jerusalem, Nehemiah Persoff emigrated with his family to America in 1929.

Following schooling at the Hebrew Technical Institute of New York, he found a job as a subway electrician doing signal maintenance until an interest in the theater altered the direction of his life.

He joined amateur groups and subsequently won a scholarship to the Dramatic Workshop in New York. This led to what would have been his Broadway debut in a production of "Eve of St. Mark", but he was fired before the show opened. He made his official New York debut in a production of "The Emperor's New Clothes" in 1940.

WWII interrupted his young career in 1942, when he was inducted into the United Sates Army, returning to the stage after his hitch was over in 1945, three years later. He sought work in stock plays and became an intern of Stella Adler and, as a result, a strong exponent of the Actor's Studio. Discovered by Charles Laughton and cast in his production of "Galileo" in 1947, Persoff made his film debut a year later with an uncredited bit in The Naked City (1948).

Short, dark, chunky-framed and with a distinct talent for dialects, Persoff became known primarily for his ethnic villainy, usually playing authoritative Eastern Europeans.

In a formidable career which had him portraying everything from cab drivers to Joseph Stalin, standout film roles would include Leo in The Harder They Fall (1956) with Humphrey Bogart, Gene Conforti in Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956), Albert in This Angry Age (1958) and gangster Johnny Torrio in Al Capone (1959). That same year he played another gangster, the small role of Little Bonaparte, in Some Like It Hot (1959).

He was a durable performer during TV's "Golden Age" (Gunsmoke (1955), The Twilight Zone (1959)) and well beyond (Chicago Hope (1994), Law & Order (1990)), playing hundreds of intense, volatile and dominating characters.

In later years, his characters grew a bit softer as Barbra Streisand's Jewish father in Yentl (1983) and the voice of Papa Mousekewitz in the An American Tail (1986) will attest. Later stage work included well-received productions of "I'm Not Rappaport" and his biographical one-man show "Sholem Aleichem".

After declining health and high blood pressure forced him to slow down, Persoff took up painting in 1985, studying sketching in Los Angeles. Specializing in watercolor, he created more than 100 works of art, many of which have been exhibited up and down the coast of California. He celebrated his 100th birthday in 2019.

American character actor who achieved considerable fame in the last decade of his life. A native of Kokomo, Indiana, Strother Martin Jr. was the youngest of three children of Strother Douglas Martin, a machinist, and Ethel Dunlap Martin. His family moved soon after his birth to San Antonio, Texas, but quickly returned to Indiana. Strother Jr. grew up in Indianapolis and in Cloverdale, Indiana. He excelled at swimming and diving, and at 17 won the National Junior Springboard Diving Championship. He attended the University of Michigan as diving team member. He served in the U.S. Navy as a swimming instructor in World War II. Nicknamed "T-Bone" Martin for his diving style, his 3rd place finish in the adult National Springboard Diving Championships cost him a place on the 1948 Olympic team. He moved to California to become an actor, but worked in odd jobs and as a swimming instructor to Marion Davies and the children of Charles Chaplin. He found work as a swimming extra in several films and as a leprechaun on a local children's TV show, "Mabel's Fables." Bit parts came his way, leading to television work with Sam Peckinpah, which led to a lifelong relationship. He also found memorable roles for John Ford and by the 1960s was a familiar face in American movies. With Cool Hand Luke (1967) in 1967 came new acclaim and a place among the busiest character actors in Hollywood. He worked steadily and in substantial roles throughout the 1970s and seemed at the peak of his career when he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1980.

Daniel Peter "Dan" O'Herlihy was born on 1 May 1919 at Odessa Cottage, Wexford Town, County Wexford (Ireland) to John Robert O'Herlihy, a civil servant from Cork who later worked in the Department of Industry and Commerce, and Ellen (née Hanton). Dan had at least two siblings, a sister and a younger brother (Michael O'Herlihy, who became a television director). The family moved to Dublin when Dan was one year old. Educated at CBS Eblana (Dún Laoghaire Christian Brothers School), as a teenager he developed literary ambitions. Upon entering UCD, he applied to study law but rapidly switched to architecture which allowed him to use his drawing skills. While a student he published political cartoons in Irish newspapers under the initials "TOC".

O'Herlihy decided not to follow in his father's footsteps, forsaking the life of an architect in favour of the acting profession. The tall, distinguished-looking university graduate boasted a rich, resonant voice which enabled him to easily find work in radio plays, as well on the stage. He first came to note as a small part actor with the Gate and Abbey Theatre Players, on occasion putting his architectural qualifications to use as a set designer. His first leading role was in Sean O'Casey's play 'Red Roses for Me' in 1944. During one of his performances in Dublin, he was spotted by the director Carol Reed and cast as an IRA terrorist in Odd Man Out (1947). This, and another London-produced film, Hungry Hill (1947), resulted in good critical notices , prompting another genial filmmaker, Orson Welles, to cast O'Herlihy in the role of Macduff for his Mercury/Republic production of Macbeth (1948). While this enterprise was far from successful, the actor's rugged, bearded appearance sufficiently impressed Luis Buñuel to cast him in the titular role of Robinson Crusoe (1954).

Until the arrival of "Friday", the only other featured character, this definitive version of Daniel Defoe's shipwrecked 17th century mariner was a tour-de-force one man show, a compelling, wordless portrayal of agonised solitude. However, as the Mexican production was considered merely a B-movie in Hollywood, O'Herlihy was forced to invest some of his own money to have the film exhibited in Los Angeles. While he was rewarded with an Oscar nomination, few worthy job offers came his way. For the remainder of the decade, he worked under short-term contracts as a character actor (often billed as "Daniel O'Herlihy") for Universal and 20th Century Fox, typically cast in costume dramas like The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), The Purple Mask (1955) and The Virgin Queen (1955). When movie roles became scarce, he branched out into anthology television, eventually becoming a much sought-after guest star on popular prime time shows like The Untouchables (1959), Bonanza (1959) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964). Work on radio shows, like 'Johnny Dollar', 'Suspense' and 'Lux Radio Theatre', also continued to provide him with a steady source of income.

From the mid-1960s, he was afforded several better film opportunities: first, in a memorable dual role as the sinister, voyeuristic Dr.Caligari AND the handsome psychiatrist treating repressed mental patient Jane Lindstrom (Glynis Johns), in Robert Bloch's off-beat psycho-thriller, The Cabinet of Caligari (1962). Second, he played an anguished U.S. Air Force general contemplating orders to drop a hydrogen bomb over New York, in Sidney Lumet's gripping anti-war drama Fail Safe (1964). He was also, among later big screen appearances, one of many name actors in the star-studded military epic Waterloo (1970) (as Napoleon's "Marshal Ney"); unrecognisable in make-up as a reptilian alien in the 'Star Wars' clone The Last Starfighter (1984); as irredeemable villains in Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) and RoboCop (1987); and as the inscrutable Andrew Packard in Twin Peaks (1990) on television. He continued to alternate film work with acting on stage in Los Angeles and at the Abbey Theater. Dan O'Herlihy died on 17 February 2005, aged 85. He left his papers to the care of University College Dublin (UCD) where he had graduated with a degree in architecture in 1945.

Versatile, award-winning character actress Eileen Heckart, with the lean, horsey face and assured, fervent gait, was born Anna Eileen Herbert on March 29, 1919, in Columbus, Ohio. An only child, she lived with her mother after her parents separated when she was 2 years old, and was eventually adopted by her grandfather, whose surname (Heckart) she took. Her childhood was an acutely unhappy one. Her mother, an alcoholic, was married five times, and her stern grandmother, with whom Eileen was often shuttled off to stay, was physically abusive. To survive, Eileen escaped into the joy of movies as an adolescent.

She graduated from Ohio State University in 1942 with a degree in English. That same year she married John Harrison Yankee Jr., an insurance broker. They had three sons in a union that lasted 54 years, unusual for a feisty, independent lady of show business. While her husband was off to the war (he joined the Navy), she moved to New York and toiled in a number of day jobs while trying to jump start a career in acting. Beginning in summer stock, she took classes at the American Theatre Wing and apprenticed in a number of obscure plays/revues such as "Tinker's Dam" (1943) and "Musical Moment" (1943).

Following extensive work on the NY stage, which included her Broadway debut as an understudy and eventual replacement in "The Voice of the Turtle" (1945), she established herself as a major force on the Great White Way. Her first big break under the Broadway lights was her portrayal of the arch, lonely schoolteacher in William Inge's "Picnic", which earned her both the Outer Critics Circle and Theatre World awards in 1953. (Rosalind Russell played the role in the film version.)

Heckart was in demand by then as flinty, overwrought, down-to-earth types or wise-to-the-bone old gals. Later award-worthy Broadway hits would include "The Bad Seed" (which earned her the Donaldson award), "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (Tony-nom), "Invitation to a March" (Tony-nom), and "Butterflies Are Free" (Tony-nom). Intermixed were live performances on TV for such prestigious programs as "Goodyear Television Playhouse", "Kraft Television Theatre", "Studio One", "Suspense", "The Alcoa Hour", and "Playhouse 90".

Heckart was a dominant yet only intermittent force in films, making her debut in the so-so Miracle in the Rain (1956) featured as Jane Wyman's confidante. Although greatly disappointed at losing the bid to recreate her Broadway role in the film version of Picnic (1955) (Rosalind Russell won the honors), she did receive the satisfaction of transferring her scene-chewing stage role as the despairing, drunken mom whose son falls victim to young Patty McCormack's malevolent mischief in The Bad Seed (1956). For this Eileen copped both Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. During this period she fell into a number of dowdy matrons, dour moms and matter-of-fact gal friends with flashy roles in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), Bus Stop (1956), Hot Spell (1958) and Heller in Pink Tights (1960).

Earning another Tony nomination and the New York Drama Critics Award for her brittle role in the 1957 production of Inge's "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs", she was pregnant with her third child when the film version of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) started rolling and Angela Lansbury stepped in to replace her.

For most of the 1960s, she traded off TV guest parts ("Ben Casey", "Dr. Kildare", "The F.B.I.", "The Defenders") with theater roles ("Pal Joey", "Barefoot in the Park", "You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running"). She was finally rewarded on film as blind Edward Albert's busybody mom in Butterflies Are Free (1972), netting the Academy Award for "Best Supporting Actress". It was a role she had played on Broadway, receiving her fourth Tony nomination.

The Oscar did not bring her the choice roles which other winners had enjoyed but she continued on in all three mediums quite enviably. While not fond of sitcom work, she gave Emmy-style for her guest work on such shows as "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", "Love & War", "Ellen", "Cybill", and was part of a short-lived ensemble series as one of The 5 Mrs. Buchanans (1994). She also put together a one-woman stage tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt and gave assertive theater performances in "The Ladies of the Alamo", "The Cemetery Club", and "Northeast Local".

The Tony Award eluded the four-time nominee during her long, eventful career. The Tony committee finally made up for this oversight in 2000 by awarding her a "special" Tony for "excellence in theater, triggered by her final, multiple award-winning success (Obie, Drama Desk) as an Alzheimer's patient in "The Waverly Gallery" in 2000. In retrospect, it was none too soon as Heckart, who worked nearly until the end, had been diagnosed with lung cancer, which was kept secret until after her death, on December 31, 2001, aged 82.

Patricia Paz Maria Medina was born on July 19, 1919 in Liverpool, England to a Spanish father and an English mother. She began acting as a teenager in the late 1930s and worked her way up to leading roles in the mid-1940s, then left for Hollywood. Medina teamed up with British actor Louis Hayward and they appeared together in Fortunes of Captain Blood (1950), The Lady and the Bandit (1951), Lady in the Iron Mask (1952) and Captain Pirate (1952). Voluptuous and exotic-looking, Medina was often typecast in period melodramas such as The Black Knight (1954). Two of her more notable films were William Witney's Stranger at My Door (1956) and Orson Welles's Confidential Report (1955), a follow-up of The Third Man (1949), based on the radio series "The Lives of Harry Lime". Although prolific during the early 1950s, her film career faded away by the end of the decade, leading to stage and television roles.

Medina appeared as Margarita Cortazar in four episodes of Walt Disney's Zorro (1957), and as Diana Coulter in two episodes of Richard Boone's Have Gun - Will Travel (1957). She returned to the screen in Robert Aldrich's adaptation of the lesbian-themed drama The Killing of Sister George (1968). She and her husband, American actor Joseph Cotten, toured together in several plays and on Broadway in the murder mystery, "Calculated Risk". Her appearances on television include episodes of Bonanza (1959) titled "The Spanish Grant" and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962) titled "See the Monkey Dance". She played Harriet Balfour in an episode of Perry Mason (1957) titled "The Case of the Lucky Loser", and as Lucia Belmont in an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) titled "The Foxes and Hounds Affair".

Patricia Medina retired from acting in 1978 after 40 years in the motion picture industry. She died at age 92 of natural causes on April 28, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. She was interred at Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia, alongside Cotten.

Jocelyn Brando, the older sister of Marlon Brando, was born Nov. 18, 1919, in San Francisco, California, to Marlon Brando Sr. and his wife, the former Dorothy Pennebaker. Jocelyn and Marlon and their sister Frances grew up mostly on a farm near Evanston, Illinois, though the family moved around during their childhoods. The bane of the children's existence was the alcoholism of both parents, which was particularly acute with their mother. Her brother's friend Karl Malden believed that Jocelyn's promising career was derailed by alcohol. Despite not living up to her promise, she managed a career that spanned five decades in the theater, film and television.

Jocelyn Brando came to the stage naturally, first appearing in a theatrical production under the direction of her mother, who was a principal in an Omaha community theater group that included Henry Fonda. She made her Broadway debut soon after her 22rd birthday, appearing in "The First Crocus" at the Longacre Theatre on January 2, 1942. The play was a resounding flop and closed after five performances. Her next appearance on Broadway came two months after her kid brother Marlon made theatrical history as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire." On February 18, 1948, Jocelyn opened as Navy nurse Lt. Ann Girard in support of family friend Henry Fonda as the eponymous "Mister Roberts." The play was a smash hit, running just shy of three years for a total of 1,157 performances. Jocelyn did not complete the run of the play, appearing in the comedy "The Golden State" in the 1950-51 season, a flop that lasted but 25 performances. She rebounded in a succès d'estime in Eugene O'Neill's "Desire Under the Elms" in 1952, though the play only lasted 46 performances. One of her co-stars was Colleen Dewhurst, who would go on to rank as the greatest interpreter of O'Neill's female characters. Jocelyn would later appear in support of Dewhurst in a Broadway revival of O'Neil's "Mourning Becomes Electra", Back in uniform as a military officer, Jocelyn made her film debut in Don Siegel's war drama China Venture (1953). When she first arrived in Hollywood, she gave an interview with "The New York Times" in which she commented on her brother's advice--or lack of it--to the tyro film actress: "Marlon is a sweet fellow, and he works very hard. I asked him for a tip about pictures, and he answered, 'Oh, I just say the words. That's all I know about picture acting'. He probably was smart at that to let me find my own way." It was her second film that was her best-known movie role: detective Glenn Ford's doomed wife in Fritz Lang's classic gangster movie The Big Heat (1953). Jocelyn's character was blown to cinematic kingdom come in an off-camera explosion when she starts the family automobile and detonates a bomb intended for screen hubby Ford. It remains one of the most famous moments in cinema. She eventually appeared in supporting roles in two of her brother's films, The Ugly American (1963) and The Chase (1966).

While her career in films never flourished, she had a healthy career in television from the 1940s through the 1980s, appearing in guest roles on scores of television shows, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), Wagon Train (1957) and Little House on the Prairie (1974). In the early 1970s she appeared as Mrs. Krakauer on the daytime TV soap opera Love of Life (1951). She also had a recurring role as Mrs. Reeves on the prime-time potboiler Dallas (1978) for several years. Her last major film was "Mommie Dearest" (1981) , the Joan Crawford roman a clef.

Jocelyn vociferously defended her superstar brother in the press throughout his half-century of celebrity, stressing his strong family ties. She was with the great actor when he died at age 80 of lung failure at his Los Angeles home on July 1, 2004 (the same disease had earlier claimed their sister Frances, who was a painter).

Karl Malden, in his 1997 autobiography "When Do I Start?", recounts how circa 1979 he cautioned his friend Marlon about his own intake of alcohol. Malden reminded his younger friend, whom he had known at that point for 35 years, that alcohol had destroyed his mother's life, had compromised that of his father and likely was the reason that Jocelyn never became a major actress. Jocelyn Brando, who was twice married and had two sons, died of natural causes at her Santa Monica, California, home on November 20, 2005, two days after her 86th birthday. If we take Karl Malden's word for it--who knew her and her work and her promise--but for the fatal flaw that ran through the Brando-Pennebaker family, she might have had a career that would have taken her out of the shadows and elevated her to more than just a footnote in her brother's career.

Carole Landis was born on New Year's Day in 1919 in Fairchild, Wisconsin, as Frances Lillian Mary Ridste. Her father, a railroad mechanic, was of Norwegian descent and her mother was Polish. Her father walked out, leaving Carole, her mother and an older brother and sister to fend for themselves.

After graduating from high school, she married Jack Robbins (Irving Wheeler), but the union lasted a month (the marriage was annulled because Carole was only 15 at the time). The couple remarried in August 1934, and the two headed to California to start a new life. For a while she worked as a dancer and singer, but before long the glitter of show business drew her to Los Angeles.

She won a studio contract with Warner Brothers but was a bit player for the most part in such films as A Star Is Born (1937), A Day at the Races (1937), and The Emperor's Candlesticks (1937). The following year started out much the same way, with more bit roles. By 1939, she was getting a few speaking roles, although mostly one-liners, and that year ended much as had the previous two years, with more bit roles; also, she and Wheeler were divorced.

In 1940 she was cast as Loana in the Hal Roach production of One Million B.C. (1940); she finally got noticed (the skimpy outfit helped), and her career began moving. She began getting parts in B pictures but didn't star in big productions -- although she had talent, the really good roles were given to the established stars of the day.

Her busiest year was 1942, with roles in Manila Calling (1942), The Powers Girl (1943), A Gentleman at Heart (1942), and three other movies. Unfortunately, critics took little notice of her films, and when they did, reviewers tended to focus on her breathtaking beauty. By the middle 1940s, Carole's career was beginning to short-circuit. Her contract with 20th Century-Fox had been canceled, her marriages to Willis Hunt Jr. and Thomas Wallace had failed, and her current marriage to Horace Schmidlapp was on the skids; all of that plus health problems spelled disaster for her professionally and personally.

Her final two films, Brass Monkey (1948) and The Silk Noose (1948) were released in 1948. On July 5, 1948, Carole committed suicide by taking an overdose of Seconal in her Brentwood Heights, California, home. She was only 29 and had made 49 pictures, most of which were, unfortunately, forgettable. If Hollywood moguls had given Carole a chance, she could have been one of the brightest stars in its history.

Comedic actor Howard ("Howie") Jerome Morris, of Jewish heritage, was born in The Bronx, New York, on September 4, 1919. This short, quicksilver comic of TV's "Golden Age" also went on to possess one of the finest vocal instruments for animation. Classically trained on the Shakespearean stage, he forged his own destiny in an entirely different direction after a chance meeting with Carl Reiner in a radio workshop. Following military service in World War II, in which the two entertained troops together (they appeared in Army productions of "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" directed by none other than Maurice Evans, they returned to the professional entertainment fold and appeared together in a 1946 road company of the stage musical "Call Me Mister." Howie also went on to be featured on Broadway as Rosencrantz in "Hamlet" and in the original production of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." He and Reiner would reconnect when asked to come aboard as part of the acting repertory team on Your Show of Shows (1950) and its successor Caesar's Hour (1954), the classic sketch TV show of the 1950s that starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. After years of "second banana" TV success, Howie wished for "top banana" stardom and sought work as such with varying degrees of success.

On the New York stage he co-starred as the leprechaun Og in a 1960 revival of "Finian's Rainbow" and, from the early 1960s on, his mastery of dialects and vocal versatility made him an important staple at the Hanna-Barbera animation studio, offering hundreds upon hundreds of voices for The Flintstones (1960), The Jetsons (1962), Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1971), and other such classic Saturday morning cartoon shows as well as the popular voices of Adam Ant, Gerald McBoing-Boing, Beetle Bailey and Jughead Jones. He would intersperse this work with some catchy offbeat characterizations in front of the camera, usually comedic but occasionally dramatic, on both the big and small screens. He added zest to a host of standard comedy films including Boys' Night Out (1962) with Kim Novak, The Nutty Professor (1963) and Way... Way Out (1966), both with Jerry Lewis, and Mel Brooks' spoofs High Anxiety (1977) and History of the World: Part I (1981). As for television, Howie directed Danny Thomas and Andy Griffith in their respective sitcoms, and made a wonderfully eccentric impression on-camera as the grizzled, bucolic, rock-tossing Ernest T. Bass on Griffith's 60's show. The role became such a popular character that Howie was invited to play it sporadically for three seasons.

Morris also turned to film directing and helmed such fluff as Who's Minding the Mint? (1967), With Six You Get Eggroll (1968) and Don't Drink the Water (1969), the last-mentioned written by Woody Allen. Seen more than heard during his twilight career, he continued on with directing commercials and popped up here and there well into the 1990s in comic cameos and as a vocal artist. Married five times (twice to one woman) with four children in all, Howie suffered from poor health in later years and died of congestive heart failure at age 84, on May 21, 2005. He was buried at Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

Prior to his illustrious Hollywood and television careers, Joe Seneca (né Joel McGhee) belonged to a top flight singing group - The Three Riffs - that worked the better supper clubs in New York City. He was also a fine songwriter and had a big hit with "Talk to Me" sung by Little Willie John.

With effortless class and elegant charm Gene Barry took '50s and '60s TV by storm, after a rather lackluster start on the musical stage and in films. Born Eugene Klass in New York City on June 14, 1919, to Martin (an amateur violinist), and Eva (an amateur singer), he showed a gift at an early age as a violin virtuoso, obviously inherited from his father. After attending various public schools, he graduated Valedictorian from New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, New York.

Possessing an impressive baritone voice, he concentrated on singing after breaking his arm playing football in school ended any thoughts of a symphonic career. At age 17 he earned a singing scholarship awarded by David Sarnoff (the head of RCA at the time), to the Chatham Square School of Music, and studied there for two years. In the meantime Gene found work in nightclubs, choirs, fairs and emceeing variety shows, and briefly appeared on the vaudeville stage and on radio, winning a prize on Arthur Godfrey's "Talent Scouts" program.

The young actor made it to Broadway in 1942 with the musical "New Moon", and went on to appear in the 1944 Mae West vehicle "Catherine Was Great", where he met and subsequently married chorus girl Betty Barry, whose stage name was Julie Carson at the time. For the rest of the decade, Gene appeared in a random selection of plays and musicals, which did little to elevate his Broadway standing. Hollywood finally beckoned in the 1950's, after gaining some notice on the program "Hollywood Screen Test", and Paramount signed him to a contract.

Gene had stoic co-starring roles in such dramatic "B" films as The Atomic City (1952) (his debut movie), Those Redheads from Seattle (1953), and Alaska Seas (1954), none of which capitalized on his singing ability. The one movie in which he did sing, Red Garters (1954), did not fare well with the public. His most recognizable role during this period was as Dr. Clayton Forrester, a scientist who finds himself in the midst of a Martian invasion in the cult science-fiction classic The War of the Worlds (1953).

Television became his preferred medium after being offered the title role in Bat Masterson (1958), and he quickly established a very successful niche as a suave, dapper gentleman in this and other TV productions. Despite the elegant, globe-trotting typecast that befell him, his other TV characters proved just as well-received: jet-setting detective Amos Burke in Burke's Law (1963), for which he won a Golden Globe, and the impeccably dressed publishing tycoon Glenn Howard in The Name of the Game (1968). Gene revisited the stage and cabaret venues in the 1970's when his on-camera career hit a lull, appearing frequently with his wife as his leading lady.

The singer/actor made a triumphant return to Broadway in 1983, starring as a wealthy gay socialite in the musical version of the popular French film La Cage aux Folles (1978), earning him a Tony nomination - but he lost the award to his more flamboyant co-star George Hearn. After a year on Broadway, he joined the road company in San Francisco, and played Los Angeles for a lengthy run. Other musicals included "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever", "Watergate: The Musical" (as Nixon), "Fiddler on the Roof" (with his wife) and "No, No, Nanette". Gene also appeared in his one-man cabaret show entitled "Gene Barry in One" from time to time.

In later years he made only occasional TV and stage appearances (bringing back his famous characters Bat Masterson and Amos Burke, much to the enjoyment of his fans), preferring to indulge in his favorite hobby - painting. He made a very brief return to feature films, sharing a cameo scene with one-time co-star Ann Robinson in Steven Spielberg's epic remake of The War of the Worlds (2005), with both of them playing the Tom Cruise character's mother and father in-law.

Gene was a political activist, a passion he shared with his wife Betty, who died in 2003 after an almost 60 year marriage. The couple had two sons of their own, and later in life they adopted a daughter. Gene passed away on December 9, 2009 at the age of 90.

Warren Stevens was born in Pennsylvania and joined the Navy at age 17. His interest in acting was piqued while he was attending Annapolis, and this resulted in 12 weeks of summer stock in Virginia. His friends, Gregory Peck and Kenneth Tobey, later arranged interviews for Stevens at the renowned Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. Following service as an Army Air Corps pilot in Europe during World War II, Stevens began concentrating on his acting career, working in radio and summer stock and joining New York's Actors Studio.. His break came via a key role in Broadway's "Detective Story", which in turn led to offers from Hollywood studios and a contract with 20th Century-Fox. In the half-century since his movie debut, he has acted in dozens of features and hundreds of TV episodes.

John Newman Mitchum was the September child of a Norwegian mother and an Irish/Blackfoot father whom he never knew, as he was killed in a tragic train yard accident in 1919. His two-years-older brother Robert filled the role as best as he could, while their older sister Annette studied the lively arts and eventually joined a traveling vaudeville team. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the young family moved to Rising Sun, Delaware, where farm life didn't agree with the young boys. Scarce opportunities took them to New York City, where the streets of Hell's kitchen taught the brothers to fight, a skill they developed so well they earned the moniker 'them ornery Mitchum boys'. Eventually, when the Great Depression deepened, the family was forced to separate with the intention of meeting up with sister Annette, who had married a sailor and moved to California, changing her name to Julie. The teenage boys set out with little more than clean handkerchiefs to find their way across the country by the only means they could: hitchhiking and riding the rails. Their somewhat aimless journey took them to places they had never been; where their Eastern accents were not welcome, so they quickly learned that accurately mimicking the local dialect would keep them out of trouble--some of the time! While brother Robert fairly quickly discovered his place in Hollywood legend, John sought his destiny on the high seas, professionally boxing, or conducting a choir. When the opportunity for acting came along John found his perfect niche as a character actor, mostly playing heavies since he was an imposing figure of a man. John's roles had him playing alongside a wide range of celebrities, from Humphrey Bogart in "Knock On Any Door" (1949) to Gladys Knight in "Pipe Dreams" (1976), Clint Eastwood of "Dirty Harry" (1971) to John Wayne in "Chisum" (1970), appearing in 58 films overall. It was during production of "Chisum" that John Wayne offered his voice for an anthology of John's poetry that seeks to uplift US culture, "America, Why I Love Her", a recording for which Mitchum was nominated for a Grammy in 1973. John was a consummate storyteller (as was his brother Robert), and with his fascination with US history in particular he was ever-ready to regale anyone with a thoughtful, interesting, and insightful anecdote, especially if a guitar was available. It was the wedding of music and history that brought him to create the recording "Our Land, Our Heritage" with Dan Blocker; big "Hoss" from "Bonanza", in 1964. Mitchum had some recurring roles throughout his television career; such as "Pickalong" from "Riverboat", or "Hoffenmueller" from "F-Troop", over 150 appearances in all during the span of a half-century career. The brothers Mitchum legacy has been well-preserved in his often hilarious autobiography, "Them Ornery Mitchum Boys", published in 1989. The subjects range from brother Robert escaping a Georgia chain-gang to his "poontang" interview; from John surviving an attacking whale on a three-masted schooner to his adventures riding the rails, developing a great love and respect for the people of the United States.