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Tall, dark, and handsome, Italian actor Cesare Danova (pronounced Chez-a-ray Da-NO-va) was a true Renaissance man. As a boy, it appeared he might become a professional athlete. But his family wanted him to become a doctor. Cesare, by his own account, studied medicine with such diligence that he suffered a nervous breakdown shortly before he was to take his degree. While recuperating, he was sent by a friend to see Dino De Laurentiis, the famous Italian producer, who was so impressed that he gave Danova a screen test. Thinking it was a joke, Danova insisted on seeing the screen test for himself. Soon, he was cast as the lead in La figlia del capitano (1947) (The Captain's Daughter). Thus began his career as an Italian Errol Flynn. In almost 20 European films, Danova played the dashing lead, riding horses, jumping through windows, dueling, and romancing beauties such as Gina Lollobrigida.

Known for his aristocratic bearing, he often played noblemen. The six-foot-four Danova was also an expert athlete. A devotee of strenuous daily workouts from age 12, Danova was a fencing champion by age 15 and a member of the Italian National Rugby Team by age 17. In addition to playing golf, tennis, and croquet, Danova was an amateur swimming champion, an expert horseman and polo player, and a master archer. He won the Robin Hood Trophy when he shot and embedded one arrow inside another arrow within the target's bull's eye. He was also a licensed pilot who flew his own planes (Beechcraft, Piper, Cherokee, and Cessna).

A descendant of famed medieval artist Filippo Lippi, Danova collected antiques and paintings. Describing himself as a fair painter, he taught himself to draw by studying a 75-cent how-to-draw book. Danova owned a library of over 3,000 books, each written in one of the five languages he knew-Italian, English, Spanish, French, and German.

Danova loved the theater and appeared onstage in Rome, Venice, Spain, New York, and Los Angeles. He was in the habit of carrying a small leprechaun good luck charm (and a shamrock ) he'd bought in Ireland, The actor traveled to the Emerald Isle many times. 'I love Ireland and I go there every chance I get,' he once said.

With almost 20 European films under his belt, Danova was spotted by MGM's head of talent in the German-backed 'Don Giovanni'(1955), his first film shown in the U.S. Impressed, the studio signed Danova to a long-term contract in June of 1956, and he traded his flourishing career in Europe for Hollywood. Rumors abounded that MGM had found its Ben-Hur (a role coveted by Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas, among others) for the upcoming super-epic remake by director William Wyler. The studio said it expected big things from Danova but that it was too soon to say whether he'd play the lead until he'd perfected his English. Still, it was no secret that Danova had been brought to America by Wyler to be groomed for the lead role. Hollywood columnist Bob Thomas referred to Danova as the 'new Italian sensation' and others compared him to 'Tyrone Power (I)' and Robert Taylor, a glamour boy to fill the shoes of Rudolph Valentino.

When Danova arrived, he didn't speak English and insisted on not learning his lines by rote. He spent the next six months learning the language, a not-terribly-difficult feat for a man with a self-professed love of words who already spoke four languages. With a background in classical acting, and his newfound English fluency, Danova was ready for his big break. But just as filming was to get underway in March, 1957, Wyler decided he didn't want an actor with an accent playing Ben-Hur (1959) and, instead, chose Charlton Heston (who would win the best actor Oscar for the role). Danova was shocked - the role would almost certainly have made him an international star.

Although Wyler didn't want Danova, MGM did. The studio said it expected important things from him when they signed him. But now they had no definite alternative plans for him. Danova's career idled for the next two years. MGM kept him on its payroll, paying him well for doing nothing at all. Danova admitted that, although he was not bitter, the lack of work day after day was enough to drive him crazy. He stayed busy reading, writing, taking diction lessons, building furniture, and playing with his two small sons, Fabrizio and Marco, by English actress Pamela Matthews, whom he had wed in 1955.

Finally, with MGM's consent, Danova made his American debut in Los Angeles opposite Paul Muni in a musical version of Grand Hotel (1932). When it flopped, he traveled to Cuba to appear in Catch Me If You Can (1959), a film starring Gilbert Roland and Dina Merrill. Financed by soon-to-be-deposed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, it was apparently never released. Danova's American film debut was as the lover of Leslie Caron in the now-forgotten The Man Who Understood Women (1959), starring Henry Fonda.

When Danova first came to America, he was quoted as saying that he wished to lose his accent so that he would be able to play the role he most wanted, that of an American cowboy. In 1958, he got his wish. He made his American television debut in a first-season episode of The Rifleman (1958) called 'Duel of Honor,' the first of three appearances. United Press International summed up Danova's reversal of fortune this way: "Televiewers will have the opportunity to see the man who almost played the title role in Ben-Hur (1959) - but in place of a chariot he'll be bouncing around in a stage coach...Danova, a ruggedly handsome Italian import, is making his American debut in ABC-TV's The Rifleman (1958). It's quite a comedown from his original intent to star in the most expensive movie in history."

Cesare Danova got a second chance at stardom when he was cast as Cleopatra's court advisor, Apollodorus, in the Cleopatra (1963), starring Elizabeth Taylor. As originally scripted, Danova's character was to be Cleopatra's lover, servicing her when she wasn't being romanced by costars Rex Harrison and Richard Burton. "I'm sort of the third man-the real lover," Danova was quoted as saying.

But then the torrid, real-life love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton became a worldwide media sensation. The resulting scandal, since both stars were married but not to each other, generated badly needed public interest in the troubled, bloated, fantastically over-budget production. Le Scandale (as the French dubbed it) upstaged everything about the film not related to Taylor & Burton. As a result, Danova's performance was now a distraction and most of it was cut, dashing predictions that Danova "should be in big demand after this one."

In October 1963, not quite two-and-a-half months after Cleopatra's release, Pamela and Cesare Danova were divorced. The Associated Press headline stated merely: Wife Divorces Cleopatra Slave.

In his early years in America, Danova turned down the opportunity to appear as a series regular on TV for fear of being typecast and locked out of movies altogether. When he finally accepted, it was for the WWII ensemble cast Garrison's Gorillas (1967), a show patterned somewhat after The Dirty Dozen (1967). Danova said he accepted because he was the first to be cast and his was the best part. He appeared as actor, a con man, expert at disguises and spreading disinformation behind the lines among the Nazis. Although he took pains to distinguish the two roles, Danova's character was obviously similar to that played by TV contemporary Martin Landau on Mission: Impossible (1966). In any event, Garrison's Gorillas (1967) did not last beyond the 1967-1968 season.

In time, as movie roles became fewer, Danova did a great deal of television work. Two of his most memorable later screen roles (and the ones for which he is best remembered) were as Mafia Don Giovanni Cappa in Mean Streets (1973), directed by Martin Scorsese, and as corrupt mayor Carmine DePasto in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978).

Cesare Danova died of a heart attack on March 19, 1992, shortly after his 66th birthday, during a meeting of the Foreign Language Film committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), at its Los Angeles headquarters.

It's been said that if Donn Pearce is remembered at all, it won't be for having written "Cool Hand Luke," his acclaimed but little-read novel about his life as a convict on a southern chain gang, but for the classic movie based on it. Starring Paul Newman in the Oscar-nominated title role, Cool Hand Luke (1967) was both a critical and commercial success. An outstanding film across the board, it brought us one of the screen's most compelling anti-heroes and one of the all-time great movie lines: "What we've got here is failure to communicate." Nominated for Best Picture, "Cool Hand Luke" was one of the key films of the Sixties. Many consider it a masterpiece.

Donn Pearce is not one of them.

"I seem to be the only guy in the United States who doesn't like the movie," Pearce told the Miami Herald in 1989. "Everyone had a whack at it. They screwed it up 99 different ways."

To begin with, Pearce has said he thinks Paul Newman was wrong for the part of Luke. Then there's the minimal royalties the financially strapped Pierson receives from a very successful movie based on his life. Faced with ill health, mounting medical bills, and other financial hardships, Pearce has had to work as a process server, bail bondsman, and private investigator just to make ends meets all these years.

On top of this, when people think of "Cool Hand Luke," they invariably remember the movie, not Pearce's book. Though critically acclaimed, Pearce's novel never received the readership it deserves. Even Pearce has said that "the book is a nonentity." For over forty years, he's been trying to recreate its success with little luck.

Donald Mills Pearce was born in 1928 in Croydon, Pennsylvania, but "never really knew what it was like to have a home." His parents divorced when he was eleven. At fifteen, he dropped out of school and tried joining the merchant marine but was refused because he was underage. The Army was another story. In 1944, it needed infantry badly. Pearce lied about his age (he was sixteen) and was inducted. But he chafed under Army discipline and went AWOL before turning himself in. A court martial sentenced him to 30 days in the stockade but he was released almost immediately as a combat infantry replacement. About to be shipped off to war, Pearce wrote a desperate letter to his mom, who informed the Army that her son was underage. The Army discharged Pearce for false enlistment.

Now seventeen, Pearce was old enough to join the merchant marine. He marveled at the world he saw during his travels. Arriving in Paris, he became involved in the thriving post-war European black market. He sold counterfeit American money to a police officer and wound up in a tough French prison. While working outside prison walls, Pearce made a run for it. Traveling cross-country by foot, he crossed the border into Italy. After replacing the seaman's papers the French had confiscated from him, Pearce boarded a ship to Canada. From there, he re-entered the United States.

Back in America, the nineteen-year-old Pearce met an older burglar, who became his safecracking partner. Pearce admits he wasn't very good at it but he was addicted to the adrenaline rush of crime. But businesses now used checks instead of cash, and most of the 27 safes Pearce says he cracked held little or no money.

In Tampa, Florida, Pearce thought he saw his big chance. Moviegoers were lined up around the block to see "Hamlet." Pearce envisioned a theater safe full of money. His partner passed on the job. Pearce, who has described himself as someone whose "mouth runs like a lunatic," bragged about the job to a waitress he was trying to bed. She told her husband, who was a cop.

Pearce was convicted of breaking & entering and grand larceny. In 1949, he was sentenced to five years hard labor ("back when hard time meant hard"). He was twenty.

Pearce spent the first year working in the print shop at the Florida State Penitentiary at Raiford. But then, he was sent to Road Camp No. 48, Tavares, Lake County, Florida. Over thirty years later, Pearce recalled the experience as "a chamber of horrors."

Chain gang inmates lived and worked with iron shackles riveted to their ankles for their entire sentences. Simple tasks such as removing and putting on their pants became a struggle. To avoid bruising their ankles, inmates had to adopt a stiff-legged, pigeon-toed gate or tie the ankle rings high on their calves.

Road gangs worked from sunup to sundown tarring roads or clearing the tall grass and weeds along roadsides with "bush axes" or "yo-yos." Also called Kayser blades or sling blades, these weed cutters had long wooden handles attached to an A-shaped yoke with a double-edged blade for clearing brush with vigorous forward and backward swings.

Guards beat prisoners for any infraction. For special punishment, there was the "Box," a cramped, unventilated wooden outhouse that was stifling by day and cold and full of insects at night. An inmate could earn a night in the Box for offenses ranging from losing his dinner spoon to "eyeballing," that is, "looking at someone who was passing you on the road. Prisoners weren't allowed to look at a free person in those days." Pearce was put in the Box twice: "Once for talking in lineup and once for letting the mess hall door slam." After a night in the Box, an inmate was put back on the "hard road" at sunup.

Pierce says he always yearned to write. He found a writing mentor in an inmate who was a Stanford graduate. Released after two years, Pearce returned to the merchant marine (earning a third-mate's license) and began writing in earnest during the long voyages. His fellow shipmates "used to say in the forecastle, 'Imagine, a seaman trying to write a book!' and they'd roar laughing."

A near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1959 immobilized Pearce for two years. In 1960, while recuperating, he started writing "Cool Hand Luke." For five years, he rewrote it as many as six times, while serving in the merchant marine and living in studio apartments in New York. Pearce already had six unpublished novels under his belt when he finished "Cool Hand Luke." It garnered a string of rejections. Finally, Scribner's published it in 1965. The New York Times called it an "impressive novel; the most brutal and authentic account of a road gang-or chain gang-that we have had." Publishers Weekly praised "the author's extraordinary gift for rhythmic prose, tragic drama, and realism made larger than life."

The day before the book's release, the New York Times printed an article entitled "A Picket Rejoices at his First Novel." Pearce was walking a picket line at New York's Pier 59. Unlike his fellow strikers, he was "beaming" on the eve of publication of his first book. He said that he met his wife, Christine, a nurse, while recuperating from his motorcycle crash, which he called "one of the best accidents of my life."

But despite good reviews, the hardcover sold a meager eleven hundred copies. A decade after the movie's release, the book was out of print and would be for another eight years. Sales of "Cool Hand Luke" were always disappointing, especially to Pearce, who struggled all his life to make a living despite having a hit film based on his life.

Two years after the book's release, it was a major motion picture. Jalem, the production company of actor Jack Lemmon, bought the film rights. Pearce wrote the first draft of the screenplay, which was completed by Frank Pierson, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Dog Day Afternoon (1975).

Pearce served as the film's technical adviser and had an uncredited bit part as "Sailor." His entire time in Hollywood, Pearce felt unwelcome. He'd expected movie people to be more open-minded about his past, but he said they treated him like an ex-con. On the last day of filming, Pearce punched out a fellow actor. He wasn't invited to the movie's premiere but attended the Oscars ceremony when he was nominated for Best Screenplay. He lost to In the Heat of the Night (1967).

The Pearces bought a house in Fort Lauderdale and struggled to raise their three sons, Hawser, Anker, and Rudder. Pearce wrote books and stories that were either rejected or published and made very little money. He worked as a freelance writer for Esquire, Playboy, Oui, and the Miami Herald. His wife, Chris, often had to work as a nurse to support them, despite ill health.

It took Pearce fours years to complete the follow up to "Cool Hand Luke." Published in 1972, "Pier Head Jump" was an off-beat, off-color tale about merchant marines who "rescue" an inflatable female doll that's so life-like, they squabble, fight, and, eventually, commit murder to possess "her" sexually. It was supposed to be a comedy.

In 1974, Pearce published "Dying in the Sun," a non-fiction account of the elderly in Florida that was not well-received. That's when Pearce quit writing to support his family, just six years after his Oscar nomination. For the next thirty years, he worked as a process server, bail bondsman, and private investigator.

In later years, Pearce underwent hernia operations, fought cancer of the spleen, and suffered from arthritis. His wife, Chris, also struggles with rheumatoid arthritis.

In 2004, Pearce returned to form with the acclaimed "Nobody Comes Back," a tale of a young soldier during the Battle of the Bulge. The review from Newsweek was so good, it caused a brief spike in sales.

"Nobody Comes Back" is Pearce's first acclaimed book since "Cool Hand Luke." As further vindication, the paperback is due out in February 2009.

Drug addict, armed robber, burglar, con man, convict, "outlaw author," and, for a time, hot Hollywood property, Eddie Little wrote first-hand about the underworld with remarkable authenticity and literary force. Despite being a grade school drop-out, Little's first novel, Another Day in Paradise (1998), was published to acclaim and was made into a major movie starring James Woods and Melanie Griffith. His writing has been hailed as "an unforgettable plunge into the brutal universe of hard-core outlaws" (Details) and "reminiscent of Hunter Thompson and William Burroughs" (The New York Times Book Review).

Born in 1955, Eddie Little was one of three children raised poor near downtown Los Angeles. His abusive father taught him to read by bending his arm behind his back to correct his mistakes. Despite this, Little learned to love reading. Bright-but-difficult, he was a rebellious thrill-seeker at an early age.

At 10, Little sniffed glue and got high for the first time, beginning a life-long love affair with dope: "As soon as my consciousness was altered, that's all I wanted to do." At 12, he ran away from home. At 14, he hid in a crawlspace for eleven hours until he and an accomplice could loot a doctor's office for cash and pills. At 15, he was arrested for robbing drugstores and underwent heroin withdrawal behind bars.

Little was sent to the Indiana Youth Center, allegedly one of the nation's last reform schools to officially use corporal punishment. He spent two years there until he escaped to Boston, where an older thief became his mentor in crime. Little pulled armed robberies, burglaries, and scams. He shot heroin round-the-clock and abused pharmaceutical narcotics, which he strong-armed from drugstores. He was living in style.

Then, Little got into a vicious, blood-drenched bar fight with a local bully and former pro wrestler. He received a savage beating but gave his much larger assailant the business end of a broken beer bottle. He was charged with attempted murder and earned a stay in Massachusetts' Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for observation.

Little was able to return to California. Infatuated with L.A.'s bright lights, he resumed the cycle of dope and crime. Then, he crashed his Harley, crushing his right leg from the knee down. He was left on crutches, his right leg an inch shorter than his left.

Broke and shoplifting to survive, Little took a telemarketing job in a semi-legitimate "boiler room" operation. Among other fast-talking con men, Little proved a natural at selling merchandise to people over the phone, whether they needed it or not. Back in the chips, he got a leg operation that allowed him to lose the crutches and walk with only a slight limp. But his drug habit was now $400-$500 a day.

Little spent most of 1982 in L.A. County jail on burglary charges. The judge believed Little was more a born criminal and con man than a poor, suffering addict, and sentenced him to six years. Little served three. It was in prison that he began writing the book that would become his ticket to a better life, "Another Day in Paradise."

After his release, Little met a beautiful woman, had a baby girl, and lived in a penthouse in Marina del Ray. Little became involved in various types of marketing and soon became known to various law enforcement agencies. He found a partner and they produced two movies under the Chariot 7 banner including Liberty & Bash and Woman of the Port, which was invited to the Cannes, New York and Toronto Film Festivals, with Little handling the raising of funds to produce both movies.

The Feds arrested Little for fraud in 1992. His previous incarceration convinced him that prison wasn't for him. Ravaged by drugs, Little suffered a stroke and was checked into rehab. He accepted a plea deal and ratted out his partner, who got eight years in prison, while Eddie skated away with three years' probation. (Six years later, Little claimed he was still receiving death threats.)

Little was working as a bouncer and furniture mover when his fictionalized account of his youthful criminal apprenticeship, "Another Day in Paradise," was published to strong reviews. Late in 1998, the film version was released. Directed by Larry Clark, Another Day in Paradise (1998) starred James Woods, as Eddie's real-life criminal mentor, and Melanie Griffith. Eighteen-year-old newcomer Vincent Kartheiser, now better known as "Pete Campbell" on the hit AMC series Mad Men (2007), portrayed "Bobbie Prine"/Eddie Little.

When the Washington Post profiled Little in May, 1998, he was on probation and discussing offers with media executives who were enthralled by his charming, streetwise persona and life story. Little signed two screen writing deals, and began writing a column called "Outlaw L.A." for the alternative newspaper L.A. Weekly. It earned him Columnist of the Year by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. But opinions differed as to whether, at age 43, Little was sincerely trying to overcome a lifetime of crime and drug addiction or whether he was just a charming sociopath "taking a vacation from crime" (which he denied) for as long as his Hollywood gig lasted.

In Europe to promote "Another Day in Paradise," Little began using drugs again while visiting Amsterdam. In Los Angeles on November 2, 1998, a 911 call summoned police to Little's apartment. Stoned and brandishing a steak knife, Little was booked on charges that could have imprisoned him for life under the three-strikes law. Released on $80,000 bail after 19 days in L.A County jail, Little plead not guilty and entered a six-month rehab. At the time, he had completed his second novel, "Steel Toes" (2001), and was working on his third novel, as well as a screenplay.

But Little could not seem to escape the bad habits of his past. Back on drugs, he was reduced to a hand-to-mouth existence. In 2003, he died of a heart attack, alone and broke, in a cheap Los Angeles motel. Eddie Little was 48.

Several memorial services were said to be planned in his name.