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Eugene Curran Kelly was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the third son of Harriet Catherine (Curran) and James Patrick Joseph Kelly, a phonograph salesman. His father was of Irish descent and his mother was of Irish and German ancestry.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the largest and most powerful studio in Hollywood when Gene Kelly arrived in town in 1941. He came direct from the hit 1940 original Broadway production of "Pal Joey" and planned to return to the Broadway stage after making the one film required by his contract. His first picture for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was For Me and My Gal (1942) with Judy Garland. What kept Kelly in Hollywood were "the kindred creative spirits" he found behind the scenes at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The talent pool was especially large during World War II, when Hollywood was a refuge for many musicians and others in the performing arts of Europe who were forced to flee the Nazis. After the war, a new generation was coming of age. Those who saw An American in Paris (1951) would try to make real life as romantic as the reel life they saw portrayed in that musical, and the first time they saw Paris, they were seeing again in memory the seventeen-minute ballet sequence set to the title song written by George Gershwin and choreographed by Kelly. The sequence cost a half million dollars (U.S.) to make in 1951 dollars. Another Kelly musical of the era, Singin' in the Rain (1952), was one of the first 25 films selected by the Library of Congress for its National Film Registry. Kelly was in the same league as Fred Astaire, but instead of a top hat and tails Kelly wore work clothes that went with his masculine, athletic dance style.

Gene Kelly died at age 83 of complications from two strokes on February 2, 1996 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California.

José Ferrer was a Puerto Rican actor and film director. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for playing the title character in Cyrano de Bergerac (1950). Ferrer was the first Puerto Rican actor to win an Academy Award, and also the first Hispanic actor to win an Academy Award.

In 1912, Ferrer was born is San Juan, the capital city of Puerto Rico. Established as a Spanish colonial city in 1521, San Juan is the third oldest European-established capital city in the Americas, following Santo Domingo (established in 1496) and Panama City (established in 1521). Ferrer's father was Rafael Ferrer, a lawyer and author who was born and raised in San Juan. Ferrer's mother was María Providencia Cintrón, a native of the coastal town of Yabucoa. Ferrer's paternal grandfather was Dr. Gabriel Ferrer Hernández, who had campaigned for Puerto Rican independence from the Spanish Empire.

The Ferrer family moved to New York City in 1914, when José was 2-years-old. As a school student, Ferrer was educated abroad at the Institut Le Rosey, a prestigious boarding school located in Rolle, Switzerland. In 1933, Ferrer was enrolled at Princeton University, located in Princeton, New Jersey. He studied architecture, and wrote a senior thesis about French Naturalism and the literary works of Spanish naturalist writer Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921). In 1934, Ferrer transferred to Columbia University, where he studied Romance languages.

In 1934, while still a college student, Ferrer made his theatrical debut in Long Island-based theatre. In 1935, he was hired as the stage manager at the Suffern Country Playhouse. Later in 1935, Ferrer made his Broadway debut in the comedy play "A Slight Case of Murder" by Damon Runyon (1880-1946) and Howard Lindsay (1889-1968). This stage production of the play ran for 69 performances, with Ferrer appearing in all of them.

Ferrer's major success as a Broadway actor was performing in the play "Brother Rat" by John Monks Jr. (1910-2004) and Fred F. Finklehoffe (1910-1977). The play had a ran of 577 performances from 1936 to 1938. Among his subsequent theatrical appearances, the most successful were staged productions of Mamba's Daughters (1938), which ran for 163 performances, and "Charley's Aunt" (1940-1941), which ran for 233 performances. His role in "Charley's Aunt" required him to perform in drag, for the first time in his career.

Ferrer had one of the greatest theatrical successes of his career when playing the villainous Iago in a Broadway production of "Othello' by William Shakespeare. The production had a ran of 296 performances, lasting from 1943 to 1944. Ferrer played his most famous role as the historical figure of Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) in the 1946-1947 Broadway season. For this role, Ferrer won the 1947 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.

Ferrer made his film debut in the Technicolor epic "Joan of Arc" (1948). He played the historical monarch Charles VII of France (1403-1461, reigned 1422-1461), the ruler who Joan of Arc served during the Hundred Years' War. For his debut role, Ferrer was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The Award was instead won by rival actor Walter Huston (1883-1950).

Ferrer's success as a film actor, helped him gain more film roles in Hollywood-produced films. He played the "smooth-talking hypnotist David Korvo" in the film noir "Whirlpool" (1949), and dictator Raoul Farrago in the film noir "Crisis". He had a career highlight with a film adaptation of the play "Cyrano de Bergerac", where he played the title role. For this role, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

His next critically successful role was that of artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) in the historical drama "Moulin Rouge" (1952). For this role, Ferrer was again nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The award was instead won by rival actor Gary Cooper (1901-1961). The film also marked a financial success for Ferrer, who received 40% of the film's profits.

Ferrer also appeared in other box office hits of the 1950s, such as the musical "Miss Sadie Thompson" (1953), the Navy-themed drama "The Caine Mutiny" (1954), and the biographical film "Deep in My Heart" (1954). Ferrer was also interested in becoming a film director. He made his directing debut with the film noir "The Shrike" (1955). His subsequent directing efforts included war film "The Cockleshell Heroes" (1955), the film noir "The Great Man" (1956), the biographical film I Accuse! (1958), and the comedy film "The High Cost of Loving" (1958). While still critically well-received, several of these films were box office flops. He took a hiatus from films productions.

Ferrer attempted a comeback as a film director with the sequel film "Return to Peyton Place" (1961) and the musical film "State Fair" (1962). Both films were box office flops. As an actor, Ferrer had a supporting role as a Turkish Bey in the historical drama "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962). While a relatively minor role, Ferrer considered the finest role of his film career.

In television, Ferrer gained a notable role as the narrator in the pilot episode of the hit sitcom "Bewitched" (1964-1972). In films, Ferrer started playing mostly supporting roles. He briefly returned to the role of Cyrano de Bergerac in the French adventure film "Cyrano and d'Artagnan". He had another notable role as a historical monarch, playing Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea (reigned 4 BC-39 AD) in the Biblical epic "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965).

Ferrer had his first notable role as a voice actor, playing the villain Ben Haramed in the Rankin/Bass Christmas "The Little Drummer Boy" (1968). But at this time, he started having legal troubles. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) accused Ferrer of still owing unpaid taxes since 1962.

Ferrer had many film roles in the 1970s, but no outstanding highlights. As a voice actor, he voiced Cyrano de Bergerac in an episode of "The ABC Afterschool Special". In the 1980s, Ferrer played a monarch again, playing Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV in the science fiction film "Dune". The film was an adaptation of the 1965 novel "Dune" by Frank Herbert (1920-1986), and Shaddam was one of the film's villains. This was among the last notable roles of Ferrer's long career.

Ferred retired from acting entirely in 1991, due to increasing health problems. His last theatrical performance was a production of the generation-gap drama "Conversations with My Father". Ferrer died in 1992, due to colorectal cancer. He was 80-years-old. He died in Coral Gables, Florida, but was buried in the Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Several of his children had acting careers of their own.

Wendy Hiller, daughter of Frank and Marie Hiller, was born on 15th August 1912 in Bramhall, near Stockport, Cheshire, England. She was educated at Winceby House School, Bexhill then moved on to Manchester Repertory Theatre. She appeared on stage in Sir John Barry's tour of Evensong, then as Sally Hardcastle in Love on the Dole. She toured extensively, playing in London and New York. She took leading parts in Pygmalion and Saint Joan at the Malvern Festival in 1936.

Born to a Czech mother and a Serbian father in Chicago as Mladen Sekulovich, on March 22, 1912, Karl Malden did not speak English until he was in kindergarten. After graduating from high school in the nearby steel town of Gary, Indiana, Malden worked in the industry for three years until 1934, when he was frustrated with the drudgery of manual labor. He left to attend the Arkansas State Teacher's College, then the Goodman Theater Dramatic School and never looked back. Three years later, he went to New York City to find fame.

Malden rapidly became involved with the Group Theater, an organization of actors and directors who were changing the face of theater, where he attracted the attention of director Elia Kazan. With Kazan directing, Karl starred in plays such as "All My Sons" by Arthur Miller and "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams. While Malden had one screen appearance before his military service in World War II, in They Knew What They Wanted (1940), he did not establish his film career until after the war. Malden won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and showed his range as an actor in roles such as that of Father Corrigan in On the Waterfront (1954) and the lecherous Archie Lee in Baby Doll (1956).

He starred in dozens of films such as Fear Strikes Out (1957), Pollyanna (1960), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Gypsy (1962), How the West Was Won (1962), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), and Patton (1970) as General Omar Bradley. In the early 1970s, he built a television career on the tough but honest screen persona he had created when he starred as Detective Mike Stone on The Streets of San Francisco (1972), co-starring with Michael Douglas. He also became the pitchman for American Express, a position he held for 21 years. In 1988, he was elected President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a position he held for five years. Following that he, published his memoir entitled, "When Do I Start?: A Memoir", written with his daughter Carla.

Malden also courted controversy by pushing for a special salute to Elia Kazan at the 1999 Academy Awards. Malden defended both Kazan and the award, arguing that Kazan's artistic achievements outshone any shame attached to Kazan's naming names before the Congressional committee investigating Communists in Hollywood. Marlon Brando refused to give Kazan the statuette; Robert De Niro ultimately did. Karl Malden died at age 97 of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles on July 1, 2009. He was buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California.

Patrick Barry Sullivan was born on August 29, 1912 in New York City. While never a major movie star, he established himself as a well-known and highly regarded character lead and second lead in motion pictures and television in a career that lasted 50 years. Legend has it that Sullivan was counseled to consider a life in the theater due to his height (6'3") and good looks. He was supporting himself as a theater usher and department store employee when made his Broadway debut in "I Want a Policeman" at the Lyceum Theatre in January 1936. Unfortunately, the show lasted only 47 performances.

In 1936, he appeared in three other plays on the Great White Way, the drama "St. Helena" and the comedies "All That Glitters" and "Eye On the Sparrow." All three were flops. Sullivan finally appeared in a hit play when he transferred into the role of Bert Jefferson in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941) by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. However the 1941-42 season brought three more flops: "Mr. Big", "Ring Around Elizabeth", and "Johnny 2 X 4". Wisely, he stayed away from Broadway for a decade, when he again transferred into a hit, "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial," taking over the role of Barney Greenwald from Henry Fonda. Sullivan was nominated for a Best Actor Emmy Award in 1955 when he reprised the role on The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1955). His last appearance on Broadway, in the original "Too Late the Phalarope" in 1956, was, true to his performance record, a flop. Barry Sullivan's talent was meant for the screen.

In the late 1930s, he gained movie acting experience in two-reel comedies produced by the Manhattan-based Educational Studios. After giving up on his Broadway career and moving to Hollywood, Sullivan appeared in an uncredited bit part in "The Green Hornet Strikes Again! (1940) (1941) at Universal before making his official film debut in the Chester Morris B-picture High Explosive (1943) (1943) at Paramount. His next picture was The Woman of the Town (1943), which was released by United Artists that same year.

Barry Sullivan never broke through to become a major star -- but he did establish himself firmly in character lead and second lead roles. He excelled at roles in which he could play aggressive characters that highlighted his centered masculinity. His most notable roles in the early part of his movie career were as the eponymous The Gangster (1947), Tom Buchanan in the Alan Ladd version of The Great Gatsby (1949) (second lead), and as the movie director in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) as part of a first rate ensemble. He had his own TV series Harbourmaster (1957) in 1957-58 and The Tall Man (1960) in 1960-62. A decade later, his acting skills were used to fine effect in two prestigious productions of stage plays as George C. Scott's brother in the Emmy Award-winning TV adaptation of Arthur Miller's The Price (1971) and the amoral patriarch in Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest (1972). He continued acting in movies until 1977, rounding off a near 40-year movie career with an appearance in Oh, God! (1977). He continued to appear periodically on television until retiring in 1980.

Sullivan was married three times and fathered three children, Johnny and Jenny Sullivan by his first wife, and Patsy Sullivan-Webb by his second wife Gita Hall. The Sullivan talent has run into three generations. Jenny Sullivan became an actress and a playwright, writing the drama "J for J" ("Journal for John") based on the correspondence between her father and her brother, who was mentally disabled. She was married to the rock star Jim Messina.

Patsy Sullivan-Webb was a successful model who appeared as the face of Yardley Cosmetics in the Swinging '60s, starting at the age of twelve. She appeared with her father in the episode of That Girl (1966) that opened the series' third season and was a contestant on The Dating Game (1965). She married the great songwriter Jimmy Webb, by whom she had six children. Two of her sons formed the rock group The Webb Brothers.

Barry Sullivan died of a respiratory ailment on June 6, 1994 in Sherman Oaks, California. He was 81 years old.

Perhaps not so surprisingly, John Payne maintained that his favorite movie of all time was one of his own -- Miracle on 34th Street (1947) -- simply because it reflected his own strong and spiritual belief system. Today, of course, the film, which co-stars beautiful Maureen O'Hara, Oscar-winning Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle and little non-believing scene-steal Natalie Wood, is a perennial holiday favorite and his best-remembered film role despite the mighty fine product he turned out over the years.

Born John Howard Payne on May 28, 1912 (not May 23, according to his daughter, actress Julie Payne), he was the middle son of three boys (Peter and Robert were the others). His parents, businessman George Washington Payne and Ida Hope (ne Schaeffer) Payne were quite well-to-do and came from a rich heritage. John was named after an ancestor who wrote the song, "Home, Sweet, Home." The boys grew up privileged on a Roanoke, Virginia estate complete with equestrian stables and swimming pools. At his mother's request, John took singing lessons in order to curb an extreme shyness problem. During his teens, the boy was shipped off to Mercersburg Academy, a prep school in Pennsylvania, and later was studying at Roanoke College at the time his father died. John was forced to give up his studies in an effort to help support his family, finding work as a male nurse and, better yet, a radio singer at a local station. Eventually, he was able to return to his studies, enrolling at the Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia University. John continued to find work as a singer and even earned some extra cash as a boxer and wrestler.

The tall (6'2"), dark, and handsome Payne, in his mid-20s, eventually turned to the stage and, while understudying Reginald Gardiner in the musical "At Home Abroad," was spotted by Samuel Goldwyn during a performance signed for film work. Billed initially as John Howard Payne, he made his debut with a minor role in Dodsworth (1936), but nothing else came of it and he was released. Freelancing in minor musicals and comedies, he appeared in a starring role (billed now as John Payne) opposite soon-to-be acting guru Stella Adler in Love on Toast (1937), and also teamed up vocally with Betty Grable on a radio show. Payne met actress Anne Shirley during this time and the couple married in August of 1937. Three years later they had a daughter, Julie Payne, who would become an actress in her own right. The happiness for John and Anne wouldn't last, however, and the couple divorced in 1943.

In 1937, Paramount took over the actor's interest with a featured part in Bob Hope's College Swing (1938). Warner Bros. then signed him up briefly, allowing him a third-billed role in the Busby Berkeley musical Garden of the Moon (1938) starring Pat O'Brien and Margaret Lindsay in which he sang the title song as well as the tune "Love Is Where You Find It," among others. Again, John didn't have the right studio fit until 20th Century-Fox came along in 1940. Then it all began to happen for him. Co-starring roles opposite Alice Faye in the musicals Tin Pan Alley (1940) and Week-End in Havana (1941), and with popular skating star Sonja Henie in Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Iceland (1942) started the ball rolling. But it was a starring role in the war tearjerker Remember the Day (1941), in which he was romantically paired with Claudette Colbert, that secured his place as a dramatic actor and gave him one of his best career showcases.

After co-starring with former radio partner Betty Grable in Springtime in the Rockies (1942), John served a two-year hitch (1942-1944) with the Army. Upon his discharge he went right back to courting Betty Grable in the musical film The Dolly Sisters (1945) and met 18-year-old singer/actress Gloria DeHaven during its shoot. The twosome wed in 1945 and a daughter and son were born within three years. Problems arose when Gloria insisted on continuing her career and the couple, after on and off separations, finally divorced in 1950. John's early post-WWII work offered some of his finest roles with significant non-singing parts coming in the form of Sentimental Journey (1946) with Maureen O'Hara which was a project he bought for himself, the glossy epic The Razor's Edge (1946) co-starring Gene Tierney, Miracle on 34th Street (1947), again paired up magically with O'Hara, and Larceny (1948) with Joan Caulfield.

After John left 20th Century-Fox, his film vehicles grew more routine. Crimers, war drama, and westerns became the norm but a smart and lucrative business arrangement (that included a seven-picture deal) with action producers William H. Pine and William C. Thomas (Pine-Thomas Productions) compensated greatly. As such John appeared in El Paso (1949), Tripoli (1950), Passage West (1951), Kansas City Confidential (1952). 99 River Street (1953), Silver Lode (1954) and ended the deal with Slightly Scarlet (1956). A shrewd businessman, Payne also obtained rights to these films in the aftermath. In 1953, he entered into his third and final marriage to Alexandra ("Sandy") Crowell Curtis, the former wife of actor Alan Curtis. In addition to returning to his singing roots with Las Vegas showroom engagements, John went on to star in his own western TV series The Restless Gun (1957) which lasted two seasons. Daughter Julie appeared in one episode.

A very serious 1961 accident, however, in which John was hit by a car in New York City, slowed him down considerably. It took well over two years for him to recover enough from his leg fractures and facial/scalp wounds to return to acting. In 1964, he co-starred on Broadway with Lisa Kirk in the Broadway musical "Here's Love". A decade later he returned to the arms of Alice Faye when they reunited on stage with a Broadway revival of "Good News". Unfortunately he had to leave the show prematurely as the dancing required was re-aggravating his leg pain. His 70s career ended with TV roles on such shows as "Gunsmoke," "Cade's Country" and "Columbo".

Retiring in 1975, John focused quietly on reading, writing short stories, flying, and cooking. In addition to daughter Julie, two of his grandchildren went on to become actresses as well -- Katharine Towne and Holly Payne. The 77-year-old Payne died on December 6, 1989 at his Malibu home of congestive heart failure. A reliable and steady leading man who may not have been a great mover or shaker on screen, he nonetheless brought tremendous entertainment to the industry and his fans both musically and dramatically in a career that lasted four decades.

Together with Fellini, Bergman and Kurosawa, Michelangelo Antonioni is credited with defining the modern art film. And yet Antonioni's cinema is also recognized today for defying any easy categorization, with his films ultimately seeming to belong to their own distinctive genre. Indeed, the difficulty of precisely describing their category is itself the very quintessence of Antonioni's films. Among the most-cited contributions of Antonioni's cinema are their striking descriptions of that unique strain of post-boom ennui everywhere apparent in the transformed life and leisure habits of the Italian middle and upper classes. Detecting profound technological, political and psychological shifts at work in post-WWII Italy, Antonioni set out to explore the ambiguities of a suddenly alienated and dislocated Italy, not simply through his oblique style of narrative and characters, nor through any overt political messaging, but instead by tearing asunder the traditional boundaries of cinematic narrative in order to explore an ever shifting internal landscape expressed through architecture, urban space and the sculptural, shaping presence of objects, shapes and emotions invented by camera movement and depth of focus.

Antonioni deftly manipulates the quieter, indirect edges of cinematic structure, often so discretely that his existential puzzles are felt before they can be intellectualized. The negative space is as prominent as the positive, silence as loud as noise, absence as palpable as presence, and passivity as driving a force as direct action. Transgressing unspoken cinematic laws, Antonioni frequently focuses on female protagonists while refusing to sentimentalize or morally judge his characters and placing them on equal footing with the other elements within his total dynamic system, like sounds or set pieces. And he violates spoken rules with unconventional cutting techniques, fractured spatial and temporal continuity, and a camera that insistently lingers in melancholy pauses, long after the actors depart, as if drifting just behind an equally distracted, dissipating narrative. Leaving questions unanswered and plot points irresolute, dispensing with exposition, suspense, sentimentality and other cinematic security blankets, Antonioni releases the viewer into a gorgeous, densely layered fog to contemplate and wrestle with his characters' imprecise quandaries and endless possibilities. Culminating in tour de force endings that often reframe the narrative in a daring, parting act of deconstruction, Antonioni's rigorously formal, yet open compositions allow his great, unwieldy questions to spill over into the world outside the cinema and outside of time.

Born into a middle-class family in the northern Italian town of Ferrara, Antonioni studied economics at the University of Bologna where he also co-founded the university's theatrical troupe. While dedicating himself to painting, writing film reviews, working in financial positions and in different capacities on film productions, Antonioni suffered a few false starts before expressing his unique directorial vision and voice in his first realized short film, Gente del Po, a moving portrait of fisherman in the misty Po Valley where he was raised. Uncomfortable with the neo-realist thrust of Italian cinema, Antonioni directed a series of eccentric and oblique documentary shorts that, in retrospect, reveal his desire to investigate the psyche's mysterious interiors. In his first fictional feature, Story of a Love Affair, Antonioni immediately subtly challenged traditional plot and audience expectation in ways that anticipate the formal and emotional expressionist dynamic that would fully flower within the groundbreaking L'Avventura (1960).

Reversing its raucous 1960 premiere to an infuriated Cannes audience, L'Avventura was rapturously lauded by fellow artists and filmmakers and awarded a special Jury Prize "for its remarkable contribution toward the search for a new cinematic language." It also presented the controlled ambivalence of Monica Vitti, who would become his partner, muse and psychological constant throughout his famed trilogy of L'Avventura, La Notte (1961) and L'Eclisse (1962) in addition to the exquisite Red Desert (1964), a film that marked another significant shift toward expressive color, male leads and working with soft focus and faster cuts. After the phenomenal commercial success of the MGM-produced Blow-Up (1966), Antonioni was devastated by the anti-climactic box office disaster of Zabriskie Point (1970) and returned to documentary. Invited to make Chung Kuo China by the Chinese government, Antonioni delivered a mesmerizing yet unsentimental four-hour tour of China which was vehemently rejected by its solicitors. A few years later, Antonioni returned to fictional form in his last masterpiece, The Passenger (1975), an enigmatic fable of vaporous identity that offers a bold companion piece to L'Avventura. Aside from the thematically retrospective Identification of a Woman (1982) and a period film made for television, The Mystery of Oberwald (1980) in which he conducted unusual experiments with color and video, Antonioni closed out his career with mostly short films, many of which were made after he suffered a stroke in 1985.

Tremendously influential yet largely taken for granted, Antonioni made difficult, abstract cinema mainstream. Embracing an anarchic geometry, Antonioni turned the architecture of narrative filmmaking inside-out in the most eloquent way possible, with many of his iconic scenes eternally preserved in the depths of the cinema's psyche. Observing modern maladies without judgment - sexism, dissolution of family and tradition, ecological/technological quandaries and the eternal questions of our place in the cosmos - Antonioni's prescience continues to resonate deeply as we find our way in the quickly moving fog.

Don Siegel was educated at Cambridge University, England. In Hollywood from the mid-'30s, he began his career as an editor and second unit director. In 1945 he directed two shorts (Hitler Lives (1945) and Star in the Night (1945)) which both won Academy Awards. His first feature as a director was 1946's The Verdict (1946). He made his reputation in the early and mid-'50s with a series of tightly made, expertly crafted, tough but intelligent "B" pictures (among them The Lineup (1958), Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)), then graduated to major "A" films in the 1960s and early 1970s. He made several "side trips" to television, mostly as a producer. Siegel directed what is generally considered to be Elvis Presley's best picture, Flaming Star (1960). He had a long professional relationship and personal friendship with Clint Eastwood, who has often said that everything he knows about filmmaking he learned from Don Siegel.

Born in Mexican revolution times, Pedro Armendáriz was the first child of Mexican Pedro Armendáriz García-Conde and American Adele Hastings. He was raised in Churubusco, then a suburb of Mexico City, before the family traveled to Laredo, Texas. They lived there until 1921, the year Armendáriz' parents died. His uncle Francisco took charge of his education, and young Pedro went to the Polytechnic Institute of San Luis Obispo, California. There, he studied business and journalism. He graduated in 1931 and returned to Mexico City where he found work as a railroad employee, insurance salesman and tourist guide. He was discovered by director Miguel Zacarías when Armendáriz was reciting Hamlet's monologue (to be or not to be) to an American tourist in a cafeteria.

After that, Armendáriz began a brilliant career in Mexico, the United States and Europe. Together with Dolores Del Río and Emilio Fernández, Armendáriz made many of the greatest films in the so-called Mexican Cinema Golden Era: Wild Flower (1943), Bugambilia (1945), Maria Candelaria (1944), among others. He was considered a prototype of masculinity and male beauty. His green eyes and almost perfect features made him perfectly cast in any role he made. But it was his passion, force and acting abilities, combined with his quality of a gentleman what made him an instant favorite of great directors like John Ford, international costars like María Félix, Sean Connery or Susan Hayward, and his fans in Mexico and other countries.

Cornel Wilde was born Kornel Lajos Weisz on October 13, 1912 in Prievidza, Hungary (now part of Slovakia) to a Jewish family. In 1920, he immigrated to New York City with his parents, Rayna (Vid) and Vojtech Béla Weisz, and elder sister, Edith. His family Anglicized their names. Kornel took the name Cornelius Louis Wilde. He spent much of his youth traveling in Europe, developing a continental flair as well as an affinity for languages. He received a scholarship for medical school, but turned it down in favor of his new love, the theatre.

A natural athlete and a champion fencer with the U.S. Olympic fencing team, he quit the team just prior to the 1936 Berlin Olympics in order to take a role in a play. In 1937, he married Marjorie Heintzen (later known as Patricia Knight), and they both shaved a few years off their ages in order to get work, Wilde thereafter claiming publicly he was born in New York in 1915 while continuing to list his correct place and year of birth on government documents.

Shortening his name to Cornel Wilde for the stage, he appeared in the Broadway hit "Having a Wonderful Time", but it wasn't until he was hired in the dual capacities of fencing choreographer and actor (Tybalt) in Laurence Olivier's 1940 Broadway production of "Romeo and Juliet" that Hollywood spotted him. He played a few minor roles before leaping to fame and an Oscar nomination as Frederic Chopin in A Song to Remember (1945). He spent the balance of the 1940s in romantic, and often swashbuckling, leading roles.

During the 1950s, his star dimmed a little, and aside from an occasional blockbuster like The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), he settled mainly into adventure films. A growing interest in directing led him to form his own production company with the goal of directing his own films. Several of his ventures into film noir in this period, both his own and those of other directors, are quite interesting (The Big Combo (1955) and Storm Fear (1955), for example). He produced, directed and starred in The Naked Prey (1965), a tour-de-force adventure drama that brought him real acclaim as a director. His later films were of varying quality, and he ended his career in near-cameos in minor adventure films. He died of leukemia in 1989, three days after his 77th birthday, leaving behind an unpublished autobiography, "The Wilde Life".

Catherine Scorsese was an American actress of Italian descent, often typecast as the typical Italian mother in films. Her best-known role was that of Mrs. DeVito in "Goodfellas" (1990).

Scorsese was born under the name "Catherine Cappa" in 1912. She was a native of Little Italy, Manhattan, New York City, with both of her parents being Sicilian Americans. Her father Martin Cappa worked as a stage coordinator in theatre, while her mother Domenica owned her own shop.

The Cappas were a large family. Catherine had three brothers and five sisters. The family lived in a three-room apartment in Little Italy, sharing spaces with other relatives and boarders.

By the 1930s, Catherine was working as a machinist in the Garment District. In 1933, she married the actor Luciano Charles "Charlie" Scorsese (1913-1993), who was also working in the garment industry at the time. The bride was 21 years old, while the groom was 20 years old. The couple had three children, including film director Martin Scorsese.

Scorsese made her film debut in her son's short film "It's Not Just You, Murray!" (1964). She also played maternal roles in "Who's That Knocking at My Door" (1967), "The King of Comedy" (1983), "Easy Money" (1983), "Goodfellas" (1990), and "Casino" (1995). She had bit parts in several other films. She appeared as herself in the documentary "Italianamerican" (1974), about the experiences of Italian-American immigrants.

Scorsese made her last film appearance in "Casino", at the age of 83. She was working at the time on her cookbook "Italianamerican: The Scorsese Family Cookbook". It was completed and published in 1996, months before her death. It was her only published work.

Late in life, Scorsese suffered from Alzheimer's disease, a chronic neurodegenerative disease. The disease eventually caused her death in January 1997. She was 84 at the time of death.

Jay Silverheels was born on Canada's Six Nation's Reserve and was one of 10 children. He was a star lacrosse player and a boxer before he entered films as a stuntman in 1938. He worked in a number of films through the 1940s before gaining notice as the Osceola brother in a Humphrey Bogart film Key Largo (1948). Most of Silverheels' roles consisted of bit parts as an Indian character. In 1949, he worked in the movie The Cowboy and the Indians (1949) with another "B movie" actor Clayton Moore. Later that year, Silverheels was hired to play the faithful Indian companion, Tonto, in the TV series The Lone Ranger (1949) series, which brought him the fame that his motion picture career never did.

Silverheels recreated the role of Tonto in two big-screen color movies with Moore,The Lone Ranger (1956) and The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958). After the TV series ended in 1957, Silverheels could not escape the typecasting of Tonto. He would continue to appear in an occasional film and television show but became a spokesperson to improve the portrayal of Indians in the media.

Martha Ellen Scott was born in Jamesport, Missouri, to Letha (McKinley) and Walter Alva Scott, an engineer and garage owner. She entered films in the early 1940s, following an initial appearance in stock. Her first film appearance was Our Town (1940), playing the same character as she played on the stage. She won an Academy Award nomination for her superb performance in the film. Martha Scott is remembered as a highly talented actress, however her work is often forgotten today as she was never seen as a truly bankable star by the major studios.

A recent memorable performance for Martha was as Sister Beatrice in the camp disaster movie Airport 1975 (1974). She played a dominant experienced nun with Helen Reddy, in a cast of major stars facing disaster on the stricken Boeing 747 jetliner.

She continued to work consistently throughout the 1970s and 1980s, often appearing in television movies and on the stage. She died at the age of 90 in May 2003 and is buried with her husband Mel Powell.

Eleanor Powell was born in 1912 in Springfield, Massachussetts, and got her professional start in Atlantic City clubs, from where she moved into in revue in New York at the Ritz Grill and Casino de Paris at the age of sixteen. She started her career on Broadway in 1929, where her machine-gun foot work gained her the title of world champion in tapping. In 1935 she came to Hollywood where she starred in the great MGM musicals in the late 1930s, establishing herself as a Queen of Ra-Ta-Taps. In spite of the fact that she was primarily a solo performer she also danced with Fred Astaire and George Murphy. After her marriage she wasn't seen on the screen, except for a short number in the Duchess of Idaho (1950). After her divorce she started a short but successful night-club career.

Musical theater devotees will undoubtedly know that the song "Let Me Entertain You" was from the classic musical "Gypsy", the born-in-a-trunk story of resilient kid troopers Gypsy Rose Lee and June Havoc who were mercilessly pushed into vaudeville careers by an unbearably headstrong mother. While the lesser-talented Gypsy, of course, became the legendary ecdysiast who turned stripping into an art form, sister June survived her "Baby June" vaudeville child days of old and the tougher road of Depression-era dance marathons to become a reputable actress of stage, screen and TV, among other things. While June may have immortalized in "Gypsy," based on her older sister's memoirs, it was a bittersweet notoriety as she felt it was a very unjust, hurtful and highly inaccurate portrait of her. It also caused a deep rift between the sisters that lasted for well over a decade.

The Canadian-born actress (she was born in Vancouver, not Seattle) entered the world in 1912 (some sources insist 1913 or 1916, but Havoc confirmed her true birth date in 2006), the younger daughter of audacious "stage mother" Rose Thompson Hovick and her husband, John Olaf Hovick, a cub reporter for a Seattle newspaper. Baby June was primed for stardom by Rose by age 2 and was soon dancing with the great ballerina Anna Pavlova and appearing in Hal Roach film shorts (1918-1924) with Harold Lloyd. A flexible, high-kicking vaudeville sensation at 5, she was featured front-and-center in an act completely built around her ("Dainty June and Her Newsboys"). Earning around $1,500 a week at her peak, the delightful child star had audiences eating out of the palm of her little hand while sharing the stage with the likes of "Red-Hot Mama" Sophie Tucker and "Baby Snooks" Fanny Brice. The unrelenting pressures and suffocating dominance of her mother, however, led to a capricious elopement at age 13 with a young boy from the act (Bobby Reed, who inspired the dancing character of Tulsa in "Gypsy"). They married in North Platte, Nebraska with each lying about their age. By the time the Depression hit, however, vaudeville, the nation's economy and her marriage had all collapsed.

Now a mother of a young daughter, April (born out of wedlock in 1930, April Kent acted briefly in the 1950s and died of a heart attack in 1998), June made ends meet by modeling, posing and toiling in dance marathons. The blonde, blue-eyed stunner also found work in stock musicals and on the Borscht Belt circuit. She made her Broadway debut in the musical "Forbidden Melody in 1936". Years passed before she earned her big break as Gladys in Rodgers and Hart's classic musical "Pal Joey" opposite Van Johnson and Gene Kelly in 1940. As a result of their scene-stealing work, the trio earned movie contracts - the two men heading off to the MGM studio and June to RKO.

Unlike her male counterparts, June found herself inextricably caught up in "B" level material. Her film debut in the war-era Four Jacks and a Jill (1942) was followed by the equally ho-hum Powder Town (1942) and Sing Your Worries Away (1942), neither requiring much in the line of acting. Her personality was big for the screen due to her broad vaudeville background, but she nevertheless could show some true grit and talent on occasion, particularly with her support role in My Sister Eileen (1942).

For the next few years she experienced both highs and lows. Her Broadway shows were either hits, such as the musical "Mexican Hayride" (1944) (for which she won the Donaldson Award), and the dramatic "The Ryan Girl" (1945), or complete misses, which included a musical version of the Sadie Thompson saga Rain. June's film acting continued to be a stumbling block, scoring best when asked to play brassy, cynical dames. While she fared well as the femme fatale in Intrigue (1947), the racist secretary in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and the gun moll The Story of Molly X (1949), more often than not, she was handed second-rate fodder to flounder in such as The Iron Curtain (1948), Once a Thief (1950) and Follow the Sun (1951). She appeared on TV in the early 50s, and she received her own short-lived vehicles as a lawyer in Willy (1954) and as host of her own show The June Havoc Show (1964).

After completing her last film Three for Jamie Dawn (1956), June refocused on stage and TV - particularly the former. She earned some of her best reviews both here and abroad in later years: Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Mistress Sullen in "The Beaux' Stratagem," Sabina in "The Skin of Our Teeth," Millicent in "Dinner at Eight," Jenny in "The Threepenny Opera," Mrs. Swabb in "Habeas Corpus," and Mrs. Lovett in "Sweeney Todd". In 1982 she pulled out all the stops on Broadway and gave a real Rose's Turn as a Miss Hannigan replacement in "Annie".

June expanded her talents to include both playwriting and directing. In addition to "I Said the Fly," she wrote "Marathon '33" (based on her Depression-era struggles) and received a 1964 Tony nomination for directing the play. June became the artistic director of the New Orleans Repertory Theatre in 1970, and later went on tour with her own one-woman show "An Evening with June Havoc". On stage and broaching age 80, the never-say-die actress appeared in a production of "Love Letters" and "An Old Lady's Guide to Survival".

June's mid-career biography "Early Havoc" was published in 1959. Married three times (her last husband, producer/director/writer William Spier died in 1973), June was long estranged from her sister, none too happy with Gypsy's portrayal of her in the best-selling memoir, "Gypsy" and equally dismayed of her Baby June character in the smash musical hit. The girls, noted for their trademark elongated faces and shapely gams, were estranged as children as well, but eventually patched things up for a time as adults. The sisters didn't truly grow close until Gypsy told June that she was dying of lung cancer in 1970. June elaborated more about her relationship with her sister in her second autobiography, "More Havoc" in 1980.

Ms. Havoc died peacefully on March 28, 2010, at her home in Stamford, Connecticut of natural causes. She was 97 years young.

The son of an attorney, Richard Carlson had an introspective quality to his performances and looked every inch the academic he first aspired to be. Following his graduation from the University of Minnesota with a Master's Degree in English, the tall, dark-haired youth had a brief stint as a drama teacher at his alma mater. However, deciding on the performing arts instead, he invested his money in buying his own theatre in Minneapolis and featuring himself as the star. By the age of 23, he had gained sufficient acting credentials to perform on Broadway opposite Ethel Barrymore, Jimmy Durante and Ethel Merman. Sidelining as a writer, he enjoyed moderate success publishing a number of short stories, but his play "Western Waters" was a flop on Broadway, closing after just seven performances. Just when it seemed Richard's fortunes were on the wane, he was offered a contract as actor/writer/director by the producer David O. Selznick.

After being encouraged by leading actress Janet Gaynor to make his screen bow in her motion picture The Young in Heart (1938), Richard moved to California on a permanent basis. During the next few years, he made several films (primarily at RKO), invariably in the part of the diffident juvenile. Many of these were forgettable second features, such as the supernaturally-themed Beyond Tomorrow (1940), or commercial failures, like the nostalgic Anna Neagle musical No, No, Nanette (1940). There was, however, one stellar performance: his newspaperman David Hewitt in William Wyler's brilliant adaptation of Lillian Hellman's southern melodrama The Little Foxes (1941). This was followed by another decent role in the fruity (but highly enjoyable) melodrama White Cargo (1942), and the lead in a cliched, run-of-the-mill crime picture, Highways by Night (1942). Then World War II intervened and Richard did his tour of duty. When he returned to the screen, it was without the intensity and vigor which had characterized his pre-war performances.

After several years of indifferent acting parts, Richard found renewed energy for his third-billed appearance in MGM's lavish Technicolor remake of King Solomon's Mines (1950). Perhaps surprisingly, this did not lead to further roles in A-grade features. Instead, Richard Carlson found himself the unlikely star of several sci-fi features, which have attained cult status over the passing years. Pick of the bunch was Jack Arnold's seminal It Came from Outer Space (1953) (based on a story by Ray Bradbury), with Richard in the role of a well-meaning, rather arcane astronomer, witness to an alien presence which turns out to be benign. The sincerity of his performance led to similar parts in The Magnetic Monster (1953) (with similar moralistic undertones) and the atmospheric Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).

Though his original contract with Selznick had stipulated directing as well, Richard did not work behind the camera until 1954. Then, he unwisely accepted charge of a silly pseudo-scientific premise entitled Riders to the Stars (1954), a low-budget enterprise bogged down by verisimilitude and technobabble at the expense of drama. In the course of the next twelve years, he directed some better second features, including the westerns Four Guns to the Border (1954) and Kid Rodelo (1966), as well as a number of television episodes. He also wrote the occasional TV script, as well as contributing articles on non-fiction subjects to several magazines.

During the early fifties -- with America in the grip of McCarthyist paranoia -- Richard gained a wider audience as the star of I Led 3 Lives (1953), playing the role of Herbert A. Philbrick (1915-1993) (on whose book by the same title the series was based), who infiltrated the Communist Party on behalf of the FBI. The show proved popular enough at the time to run for three years and 115 episodes. Richard had yet another recurring part, as stalwart Colonel Ranald Mackenzie, taming the south-western frontier in Mackenzie's Raiders (1958). For the remainder of his acting career, he guested in western and detective series, including The Virginian (1962), Perry Mason (1957), The F.B.I. (1965) and Cannon (1971) . After his retirement in 1975, Richard lived the last two years of his life in Sherman Oaks, California.

From the day she was born Martha lived in a world of music. For sure her father was a banker but he was also an amateur pianist. As for her mother, she was a housewife but also a very talented opera singer who had given up her career for the joys of matrimony and motherhood. It does not come as a surprise, under such circumstances, that the little girl's singing capacities were soon discovered. At eight she was already on a scene singing an aria from "The Barber of Seville". A critic attended the show and was impressed by her performance. He introduced her to the director of the Magyar Theater, where she landed her first contract. As of the age of 10 she was hailed as Hungary's "national idol". And it was not long before her triumph became international. An operetta, "Pogasza", was written specially for the crystal-clear-voiced little singer. Among others, she played the role of the doll in "Tales of Hoffmann" and starred in "Das Veilchen vom Montmartre" by Kalman. With the advent of sound films, she found herself very much in demand in the 1930s, bringing her beautiful voice and looks to yet more delighted viewers. It is on the set of "Mein Herz ruft nach dir" that she met Jan Kiepura, another successful opera and operetta singer. Although it was not love at first sight, Jan and Martha gradually fell in love, married two years later, had two sons and were separated only by death with the demise of Jan in 1966. In 1938, the couple fled Austria after its annexation by Hitler and settled down in the South of France first then in the USA. Martha made fewer movies but kept on singing. For instance she co-starred in "The merry Widow" in Broadway for three years with Jan Kiepura. She became an American citizen in the fifties and currently lives in Rye, new York.

Henry Burk Jones was born in New Jersey and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Helen (Burk) and John Francis Xavier Jones, and the grandson of Pennsylvania Representative Henry Burk, a Prussian immigrant. He graduated from St. Joseph's College. His Broadway debut was in 1938 in Maurice Evans' "Hamlet" (Reynaldo and the second gravedigger). He served in the army in World War II. His highly-reviewed stage appearances included the murdered handyman in "The Bad Seed," which he reprised in the film version (The Bad Seed (1956)), and the part of Louis Howe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's confidant in Sunrise at Campobello (1960). Though very ordinary in appearance ("The casting directors didn't know what to do with me. I was never tall enough or good looking enough to play juvenile leads"), he had a long and varied career on Broadway, in movies and television. His parts included a wide range of second-string roles (ministers, judges, janitors), often with a dark and even frightening underside. His television career, which included over 150 appearances, began early, in 1950. Though his movies included such well-known titles as Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), 3:10 to Yuma (1957), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Grifters (1990), and Dick Tracy (1990) no doubt his most recognizable screen performance was in the brief role of the methodical, nearly cruel coroner in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). He lived in Santa Monica, CA, and died 17 May 1999, aged 86, at the UCLA Medical Center.

Richard Brooks was an Academy Award-winning film writer who also earned six Oscar nominations and achieved success as a film director and producer.

He was born Reuben Sax on May 18, 1912, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. He graduated from West Philadelphia HS, attended Philadelphia's Temple University for two years, before dropping out and later working as a sports reporter and radio journalist in the 1930s. After a stint as a writer for the NBC network, he worked for one season as director of New York's Mill Pond Theatre, and then headed to Los Angeles. There he broke into films as a script writer of "B" movies, Maria Montez epics, serials, and did some radio writing. During the Second World War, he served with the US Marines for two years.

Richard Brooks made his directorial debut with MGM's Crisis (1950) starring Cary Grant. He scripted and directed The Brothers Karamazov (1958) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and two years later won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for Elmer Gantry (1960). He had six Oscar nominations and 25 other nominations during his film career. Brooks was a writer and director of Chekhovian depth, who mastered the use of understatement, anticlimax and implied emotion. His films enjoyed lasting appeal and tended to be more serious than the usual mainstream productions. Brooks was regarded as "independent" even before he officially broke away from the studio system in 1965. In the 1980s, he had his own production company.

Richard Brooks died of a heart failure on March 11, 1992, in Beverly Hills, California, and was laid to rest in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6422 Hollywood Blvd., for his contribution to the art of motion picture.

Rudolph Bond was raised in Philadelphia. He got his start at the Neighborhood Players. After World War II, he was invited by Elia Kazan to be a student at the famed "Actors Studio" in New York, working with such future stars as Paul Newman, James Dean, and Marlon Brando. His first big break was a role in the stage production of "A Streetcar Named Desire". Rudy's career included the theater, motions pictures and television.

German-born Henry Brandon was a character actor in American films, most often seen in villainous roles. His parents emigrated to the US shortly after his birth. His early interest in acting led him to study at the acclaimed Pasadena Community Playhouse. He landed the lead villain role in the Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy film March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934), and rapidly became a familiar and reliable heavy in pictures both large and small. In 1936 he adopted the stage name Henry Brandon after several years of being billed as either Henry or Harry Kleinbach. He captivated thriller audiences as the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu in Drums of Fu Manchu (1943), yet balanced things by playing a sizable number of sympathetic roles as well, such as the skilled foreman Joe Dombrowski in Black Legion (1937). He continued to work on stage throughout his film career, playing the villain for many years in the record-length run of the melodrama "The Drunkard". His sharp features led him rather incongruously to be cast as Indian chiefs in two John Ford features, The Searchers (1956) and Two Rode Together (1961). He kept busy in films and occasional television roles, as well as reprising his role in "The Drunkard" onstage in the 1980s, until the end of his life. Brandon was a confirmed bachelor.

Tall, rugged James Craig's career as an MGM contract player blossomed in the 1940s. This was due in large part to his strong physical and vocal resemblance to the studio's top leading man, Clark Gable (who was -- by the time Craig was signed to MGM -- serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces). The Rice Institute graduate had studied to be a physician until a sojourn in the movie capital persuaded him to try his luck as an actor. He was tutored by thespian Cyril Delevanti in 1934 and began in the industry as an extra. Having lived for some time in Texas, he had the perfect drawl just tailor-made for a western hero. James Henry Meador consequently transformed himself into James Craig when it looked like he might be given a role in the melodrama Craig's Wife (1936). As it turned out, he was mainly cast in low-budget second-feature westerns for the first two years of his Hollywood tenure. Craig's breakthrough arrived courtesy of a loan-out to RKO where he was co-starred opposite Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1940). He had some critical success as farmer Jabez Stone in The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) and scored high-profile parts in a couple of other A-grade features: the caliph in Kismet (1944), and as Halverson in Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945). However, before long, Mr. Gable returned from the war and it was back to low budget horse operas for Craig. After working in episodic television for several years in the 1960s, he called it quits and turned his talents towards a lucrative career in real estate.

Reta Shaw is best known to television audiences as Hope Lange's housekeeper in the TV series The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (1968). Disney fans will remember her as one of the singing domestics in the Oscar-winning masterpiece Mary Poppins (1964). While she never achieved stardom as a leading lady, she earned her place as a solid supporting player in a variety of popular, much-loved cinematic classics. She created the comic part of Mabel when the musical "The Pajama Game" opened on Broadway in 1954, a role she repeated in the film version.

At age 17, Samuel Fuller was the youngest reporter ever to be in charge of the events section of the New York Journal. After having participated in the European battle theater in World War II, he directed some minor action productions for which he mostly wrote the scripts himself and which he also produced (e.g. The Baron of Arizona (1950)). His masterpiece was Pickup on South Street (1953) for 20th Century Fox, but at the end of the 1950s, he regained his independence from the production company and filmed many other movies of note, including the controversial White Dog (1982).

Dane Clark was born Bernard Elliot Zanville in Brooklyn, New York City, to Rose (Korostoff) and Samuel Zanville, who were Russian Jewish immigrants. He graduated from Cornell University and St. John's Law School (Brooklyn). When he had trouble finding work in the mid-1930s he tried boxing, baseball, construction, sales and modeling, among other jobs. From there he went into acting on Broadway ("Dead End", "Stage Door", "Of Mice and Men"), which finally brought him to Hollywood. He acted under his own name until 1943 when, as Dane Clark (a name he said was given him by Humphrey Bogart), he took the role of sailor Johnnie Pulaski in Warner's Action in the North Atlantic (1943), a wartime tribute to the Merchant Marine. He was a regular in World War II movies, playing the part of a submariner in Destination Tokyo (1943), an airman in God Is My Co-Pilot (1945) and a Marine in Pride of the Marines (1945).

Though he co-starred with such luminaries as Bogart, Cary Grant, Bette Davis and Raymond Massey, it was his self-described "Joe Average" image that got him his parts: "They don't go much for the 'pretty boy' type [at Warner Brothers]. An average-looking guy like me has a chance to get someplace, to portray people the way they really are, without any frills." He was also proud of his role as Abe Saperstein, who founded the Harlem Globetrotters black basketball team, in Go Man Go (1954), a film he believed pioneered in opposing race hatred.