Frak Me 2. Galactica's Male Guest Stars 40 Years Later.

John Williams was a tall, urbane Anglo-American actor best known for his role as Chief Inspector Hubbard in Dial M for Murder (1954), a role he played on Broadway, in Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1954 film, and on television in 1958. Playing Hubbard on the Great White Way brought him the 1953 Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Play. "Dial M for Murder" was the 27th Broadway play he had appeared in since making his New York debut in "The Fake" in 1924, which he had originally appeared in back in his native England.

Williams was born on April 15, 1903 in Buckinghamshire and attended Lancing College. He first trod the boards as a teenager in a 1916 production of Peter Pan (1924). He moved to America in the mid-1920s and was a busy and constantly employed stage actor for 30 years. After "Dial M for Murder" in the 1953-54 season, though, he appeared in only four more Broadway plays between 1955 and 1970 as he focused on movies and television.

In addition to "Dial M for Murder", he appeared in Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947) and in To Catch a Thief (1955) and in 10 episodes of the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955). For Billy Wilder, he appeared in Sabrina (1954) and Witness for the Prosecution (1957). Beginning in the 1960s, most of his work was in television, including a nine-episode stint on Family Affair (1966) taking over Sebastian Cabot's duties as Brian Keith's butler when Cabot was waylaid by health problems.

He retired in the late '70s, his last acting gig being an appearance on Battlestar Galactica (1978) in 1979. He was known by many in the last phase of his career for his work on one of the first TV infomercials, when he served as the pitchman for a classical music record collection called "120 Music Masterpieces."

John Williams died on May 5, 1983 in La Jolla, California from an aneurysm. He was 80 years old.

The star of many land and underwater adventures, Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Jr. was born on January 15, 1913 in San Leandro, California, to Harriet Evelyn (Brown) and Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Sr., who owned a movie theater and also worked in the hotel business. He grew up in various Northern California towns. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but young Lloyd's interests turned to acting while at the University of California at Los Angeles. (Dorothy Dean Bridges, Bridges' wife of more than 50 years, was one of his UCLA classmates, and appeared opposite him in a romantic play called "March Hares.") He later worked on the Broadway stage, helped to found an off-Broadway theater, and acted, produced and directed at Green Mans ions, a theater in the Catskills. Bridges made his first films in 1936, and went under contract to Columbia in 1941. Allegations that Bridges had been involved with the Communist Party threatened to derail his career in the early 1950s, but he resumed work after testifying as a cooperative witness before the House Un-American Activities, admitting his past party membership and recanting. Making the transition to television, Bridges became a small screen star of giant proportions by starring in Sea Hunt (1958), the country's most successful syndicated series. Trouper Bridges worked right to the end, winning even more new fans with his spoofy portrayals in the movies Airplane! (1980) and Hot Shots! (1991), and their respective sequels. Lloyd Bridges died at age 85 of natural causes on March 10, 1998.

Lloyd Bochner had that wonderfully sonorous type of voice that was always tailor-made for radio or for the stage. Unsurprisingly then, by the time he was eleven, Lloyd was already employed as part-time voiceover artist and reader of drama serials by radio stations in Vancouver.

Lloyd Wolfe Bochner was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Frieda (Kenen) and Charles Abraham Bochner. He was of Russian Jewish and Ukrainian Jewish descent. He made his acting debut as a youth with the Joseph Barrington Juveniles. Lloyd's education at the University of Toronto was interrupted in 1943 by wartime service in the Royal Canadian Navy. However, in 1947, he graduated with a B.A. and a few years later moved to New York to further hone his acting skills. In 1953, he returned to Canada to participate in the inaugural season of the Stratford Festival getting to enact choice Shakespearean roles from Horatio in "Hamlet" to Orsino in "Twelfth Night".

Having made his screen bow in a small Canadian production, The Mapleville Story (1946), Lloyd's first significant exposure in television was as British army officer Nicholas Lacey in the half-hour NBC serial One Man's Family (1949), which had first been performed on radio and starred Bert Lytell and Marjorie Gateson. His real breakthrough came quite a few years later, once having moved to Hollywood, as co-star of the studio-bound crime series Hong Kong (1960). He played local British police-chief Neil Campbell, solving crime in tandem with an American newspaper correspondent (played by Australian actor Rod Taylor). This, in turn, led to other key roles including his almost legendary appearance in the classic The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "To Serve Man" in 1962 (at one time voted 11th in a TV guide poll of 100 best TV episodes of all time). Based on a short story by Damon Knight written in 1950, "To Serve Man" unfolds in flashback as narrated for the viewer by Lloyd's decoding expert Michael Chambers. It has all the elements of great television, with an excellent cast (including Richard Kiel, later known as 'Jaws' from the 'James Bond' movies; and Theodore Marcuse as Citizen Grigori giving an indelible impression of Nikita Khrushchev); and an unexpected and disturbing denouement when it turns out that the supposedly altruistic alien Kanamits have come to earth to harvest humans for food. Lloyd repeated his famous punch-line, "it's a cook book!", years later as a spoof in Leslie Nielsen's The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991).

For most of the 1960s and 1970s, Lloyd was cast in supporting roles, often as mellifluous, meticulously-attired, upper-class snobs, practically guaranteed to harbour treacherous intent. He appeared in several motion pictures, notably as the malicious, smooth villain Frederick Carter who unsuccessfully tangles with Lee Marvin in Point Blank (1967), and in the same year, as homosexual drug dealer Vic Rood on the receiving end of the beating from Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome (1967). However, on the whole, Lloyd's preferred medium was television. He had a recurring role in the long-running soap-opera Dynasty (1981) as Blake Carrington's manipulative rival, Cecil Colby, in league with archvillain Alexis Carrington (Joan Collins). A versatile character actor, Lloyd's clean-cut, aquiline features and quiet air of authority lent themselves to portraying a vast gallery of medical men, soldiers, politicians and executives. Some of these were men of integrity, but like many a good actor, Lloyd rather enjoyed the challenge of playing the scoundrel.

During his half century-long acting career, Lloyd Bochner garnered two Liberty Awards as best television actor, Canada's equivalent of the Emmy Awards. He was also an active member in the Association of Canadian Radio and Television Artists. He died at age 81 of cancer on October 29, 2005 in Santa Monica, California. His children are actors Hart Bochner, Paul Bochner, and Johanna Courtleigh.

Lew Ayres was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and raised in San Diego, California. A college dropout, he was found by a talent scout in the Coconut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles and entered Hollywood as a bit player. He was leading man to Greta Garbo in The Kiss (1929), but it was the role of Paul Baumer in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) that was his big break. He was profoundly affected by the anti-war message of that film, and when, in 1942, the popular star of Young Dr. Kildare (1938) and subsequent Dr. Kildare films was drafted, he was a conscientious objector. America was outraged, and theaters vowed never to show his films again, but quietly he achieved the Medical Corps status he had requested, serving as a medic under fire in the South Pacific and as a chaplain's aid in New Guinea and the Phillipines. His return to film after the war was undistinguished until Johnny Belinda (1948) - his role as the sympathetic physician treating the deaf-mute Jane Wyman won him an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. Subsequent movie roles were scarce; an opportunity to play Dr. Kildare in television was aborted when the network refused to honor his request for no cigarette sponsorship. He continued to act, but in the 1970s put his long experience into a project to bring to the west the philosophy of the East - the resulting film, Altars of the World (1976), while not a box-office success, won critical acclaim and a Golden Globe Award. Lew Ayres died in Los Angeles, California on December 30, 1996, just two days after his 88th birthday.

Paul Fix, the well-known movie and TV character actor who played "Marshal Micah Torrance" on the TV series The Rifleman (1958), was born Peter Paul Fix on March 13, 1901 in Dobbs Ferry, New York to brew-master Wilhelm Fix and his wife, the former Louise C. Walz. His mother and father were German immigrants who had left their Black Forest home and arrived in New York City in the 1870s. (The name "Fix" is of Latin/Germanic origin, and is derived from St. Vitus and means "animated" or "vital").

Besides Peter Paul, the Fix family consisted of two girls and three boys, the youngest of whom was six years older than the future actor. Peter Paul's childhood was a happy one. He and his family lived on the 200-acre property on which the Manilla Anchor Brewery, where his father was brew-master, was situated. Such was the importance of the senior Fix to the brewery that when he died at the age of 62 on the eve of America's entry into the First World War (two years after his 54-year old wife had died), the brewery closed.

The orphaned Peter Paul, who kept to himself a lot and had a vivid imagination, was sent to live with his married sisters, first one who lived nearby in Yonkers, and then to another in Zanesville, Ohio. The just-turned-17-year-old Peter Paul Fix joined the U.S. Navy on March 12, 1918, and spent his state-side service time during World War I in Newport, Rhode Island and Charleston, South Carolina. He first tread the boards as an actor while a sailor stationed in Newport, when the baby-faced salt (who looked much younger than his age) was one of six gobs chosen to play female roles in the Navy Relief Show "HMS Pinafore". The Navy staging of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta was a big hit and chalked up a run of several weeks in Providence and Boston.

Fix was assigned as an able-bodied seaman to the troopship U.S.S. Mount Vernon, which was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of France but did not sink as it was run aground. The rest of Fix's naval career was less exciting, and he was demobilized on September 5, 1919. After his discharge, Fix went back to his girlfriend Frances (Taddy) Harvey, whom he had left behind in Zanesville. He and Taddy were married in 1922 and they moved to California as Fix had always wanted to live in a warm climate.

Fix and his bride settled in Hollywood, not so much because he had set ideas about becoming an actor but because he didn't know what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He liked writing and acting in local plays, and soon became friends with the fellow tyro actor Clark Gable, who was his own age. Fix and Gable were discovered by the stage actress Pauline Frederick, who hired them to be members of her touring troupe that traveled by train the length of the West Coast putting on plays. In all, Fix - who had informally renamed himself Paul Peter - appeared in 20 plays with Gable.

Paul Fix had one of his earliest acting roles on celluloid in the mid-1920s, appearing in a silent Western starring William S. Hart. The Western genre eventually would become the one he was most identified with. He played uncredited bit parts and small roles in silents before getting his first credited role in an early talkie (which was part-silent and part-talking), The First Kiss (1928), which starred future Hollywood superstar Gary Cooper and the dame that drove King Kong ape, Fay Wray. In all, Fix appeared in 300-400 films. The Western programmers of the silent and early talkie days could be shot in less than a week.

In 1925, Taddy gave birth to their daughter Marilyn Carey, who eventually would marry Harry Carey Jr., the son of one of the first great Western superstars. They would have three more children and become part of the extended family gathered around the director John Ford. In his career, Paul Fix would appear with another Western legend, John Wayne, in 26 films, starting in 1931 with Three Girls Lost (1931). Urged on by Loretta Young, Fix became an acting coach for the young actor, and Wayne later paid him back when he became a star by having Fix appear in his movies. (The Duke also was a part of the close-knit group that collected around John Ford). With the Duke's patronage, the kinds of roles that Fix played changed. He had been typed as villains in the 1930s but, in the 40s, he began assaying a better class of character.

Paul Fix was also a screenwriter, and is credited as the writer on three films: Tall in the Saddle (1944), Ring of Fear (1954) and The Notorious Mr. Monks (1958). His favorites parts included playing the stricken passenger in the John Wayne picture The High and the Mighty (1954), Elizabeth Taylor's father in George Stevens' classic Giant (1956), the grandfather of the eponymous The Bad Seed (1956) and the judge in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). His last screen appearance was in the Brooke Shields movie Wanda Nevada (1979), but he is most famous for appearing in the recurring role of "Marshal Micah Torrance" in the popular Western TV series The Rifleman (1958). As of 1981, the 80-year old Fix was still getting mail from all over the world from "Rifleman" fans.

Paul Fix died October 14, 1983 of kidney failure. He was survived by his daughter Marilyn Carey and son-in-law Harry "Dobe" Carey, three grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

Born of African and West Indian ancestry on July 2, 1927 in New York City, Brock Peters set his sights on a show business career early on, at age ten. A product of NYC's famed Music and Arts High School, Peters initially fielded more odd jobs than acting jobs as he worked his way up from Harlem poverty. Landing a stage role in "Porgy and Bess" in 1949, he quit physical education studies at CCNY and went on tour with the acclaimed musical. His film debut came in Carmen Jones (1954), but he really began to make a name for himself - having dropped his real name, George Fisher, in 1953 - in such films as To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and The L-Shaped Room (1962). He received a Tony Award nomination for his starring stint in Broadway's "Lost in the Stars" in 1973. He also appeared in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), two sequels to the popular Star Trek films. Brock Peters died at age 78 of pancreatic cancer on August 23, 2005.

Robert Gene "Red" West was a close friend of Elvis Presley and a member of Presley's inner circle, known as "The Memphis Mafia." He first met Elvis in high school, where he was a year behind him. West played football for the Memphis Tigers high school football team, boxed in the Golden Gloves and played football for the Jones County Junior College Bobcats playing center.

West lived with his mother, Lois West, in the Hurt Housing project in Memphis. West became Elvis's personal driver in driving Elvis and band members Scotty Moore, Bill Black and later D.J. Fontana to different Southern cities for live appearances from 1955 to 1956. West served in the US Marine Corps from 1956 to late 1958 and was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, which allowed him to stay in contact with Elvis. On August 14, 1958, West's estranged father, Newton Thomas West, died, the same day as Elvis' mother, Gladys Presley.

After Elvis' discharge from the US Army in 1960, West was employed as one of the star's bodyguards. Over the years, Elvis bought West a number of vehicles as he became a world-famous celebrity. West also became a movie stuntman and appeared in 16 of Elvis' films in the 1960s, usually playing extras or bit and supporting parts. West married one of Elvis' secretaries, Pat West, on July 1, 1961. West became a songwriter for songs that Elvis, Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson and Johnny Rivers recorded, including the classic tune "Separate Ways" for Elvis, which won a BMI Award. In addition to the Elvis movies, West appeared in three Robert Conrad TV series The Wild Wild West (1965), Black Sheep Squadron (1976) and The Duke (1979). During the 1970s West, his cousin Del 'Sonny' West, and Dave Hebler served as Elvis' bodyguards, in charge of his daily transportation and keeping weirdo or potentially dangerous fans away from him. On July 13, 1976, Vernon Presley, Elvis' father, fired all three bodyguards, criticizing what he believed to be their heavy-handed tactics. The three later collaborated on a book about their lives as Elvis' bodyguards, which was published just two weeks before Elvis' death in 1977.

West continued his acting and songwriting careers, the former until 2015, two years before his death.

John Hoyt was born on 5 October 1905 in Bronxville, New York, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for When Worlds Collide (1951), Spartacus (1960) and Attack of the Puppet People (1958). He was married to Dorothy Marion Oltman and Marion Virginia Burns. He died on 15 September 1991 in Santa Cruz, California, USA.

Suave Irish-born actor with resonant voice and a commanding presence, who made his theatrical debut in 'The First of Mrs.Fraser' (1942) at the age of 19 at the Cork Opera House. Nine years later, after spells with the Gate Theatre in Dublin and the Liverpool Repertory Company, Mulhare appeared in a Laurence Olivier-directed London production of 'Othello' with Orson Welles. It was there, that he was spotted by Alan Jay Lerner and signed as an understudy to Rex Harrison for the part of Henry Higgins in 'My Fair Lady'. The play ran on Broadway from 1957 to 1962, totalling a massive 2,717 performances. Harrison dropped out of the part in December 1957, and Mulhare, a relative unknown in the U.S., took over the role. This sparked a controversy with Actor's Equity over the hiring of foreign actors, which required a noted labour negotiator to resolve. In the end, Mulhare played Higgins to both audience approval and critical acclaim more than 1,000 times between 1957 and 1960. The play subsequently toured the Soviet Union, before returning to London. On Broadway, Mulhare also replaced Michael Rennie in the leading role of Dirk Winsten in 'Mary,Mary' and starred as Giacome Nerone in Dore Schary's 'The Devil's Advocate', alongside actors Leo Genn and Eduardo Ciannelli.

It was ironic, that Mulhare followed in Harrison's footsteps on television as well, playing the part of Captain Daniel Gregg (Harrison's in the 1947 movie), the titular spectre of The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (1968). The popular NBC series updated the setting from turn of the century New England to present day, and, by comparison with its cinematic predecessor, was less sentimental, but wittier by some degree. There was an undeniable on-screen chemistry between co-star Hope Lange and Mulhare, who was Emmy-nominated for his portrayal as the cantankerous, but thoroughly charming captain. From 1982 to 1986, Mulhare also appeared on television as the articulate Devon Miles, David Hasselhoff's boss, in the fantasy series Knight Rider (1982).

Surprisingly, Edward Mulhare never achieved star status on the big screen. Among the few films he made, one only remembers his dastardly villains of Our Man Flint (1966) and Caprice (1967). He did, however, continue to make frequent guest appearances on television in series ranging from The Streets of San Francisco (1972) to Battlestar Galactica (1978). In 1988, he also hosted a series about the paranormal, entitled Secrets and Mysteries (1983). Mulhare, a confirmed bachelor, died during filming of the Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau comedy Out to Sea (1997) at the age of 74.

Ray Milland became one of Paramount's most bankable and durable stars, under contract from 1934 to 1948, yet little in his early life suggested a career as a motion picture actor.

Milland was born Alfred Reginald Jones in the Welsh town of Neath, Glamorgan, to Elizabeth Annie (Truscott) and Alfred Jones. He spent his youth in the pursuit of sports. He became an expert rider early on, working at his uncle's horse-breeding estate while studying at the King's College in Cardiff. At 21, he went to London as a member of the elite Household Cavalry (Guard for the Royal Family), undergoing a rigorous 19-months training, further honing his equestrian skills, as well as becoming adept at fencing, boxing and shooting. He won trophies, including the Bisley Match, with his unit's crack rifle team. However, after four years, he suddenly lost his means of financial support (independent income being a requirement as a Guardsman) when his stepfather discontinued his allowance. Broke, he tried his hand at acting in small parts on the London stage.

There are several stories as to how he derived his stage name. It is known, that during his teens he called himself "Mullane", using his stepfather's surname. He may later have suffused "Mullane" with "mill-lands", an area near his hometown. When he first appeared on screen in British films, he was billed first as Spike Milland, then Raymond Milland.

In 1929, Ray befriended the popular actress Estelle Brody at a party and, later that year, visited her on the set of her latest film, The Plaything (1929). While having lunch, they were joined by a producer who persuaded the handsome Welshman to appear in a motion picture bit part. Ray rose to the challenge and bigger roles followed, including the male lead in The Lady from the Sea (1929). The following year, he was signed by MGM and went to Hollywood, but was given little to work with, except for the role of Charles Laughton's ill-fated nephew in Payment Deferred (1932). After a year, Ray was out of his contract and returned to England.

His big break did not come until 1934 when he joined Paramount, where he was to remain for the better part of his Hollywood career. During the first few years, he served an apprenticeship playing second leads, usually as the debonair man-about-town, in light romantic comedies. He appeared with Burns and Allen in Many Happy Returns (1934), enjoyed third-billing as a British aristocrat in the Claudette Colbert farce The Gilded Lily (1935) and was described as "excellent" by reviewers for his role in the sentimental drama Alias Mary Dow (1935). By 1936, he had graduated to starring roles, first as the injured British hunter rescued on a tropical island by The Jungle Princess (1936), the film which launched Dorothy Lamour's sarong-clad career. After that, he was the titular hero of Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937) and, finally, won the girl (rather than being the "other man") in Mitchell Leisen's screwball comedy Easy Living (1937). He also re-visited the tropics in Ebb Tide (1937), Her Jungle Love (1938) and Tropic Holiday (1938), as well as being one of the three valiant brothers of Beau Geste (1939).

In 1940, Ray was sent back to England to star in the screen adaptation of Terence Rattigan's French Without Tears (1940), for which he received his best critical reviews to date. He was top-billed (above John Wayne) running a ship salvage operation in Cecil B. DeMille's lavish Technicolor adventure drama Reap the Wild Wind (1942), besting Wayne in a fight - much to the "Duke's" personal chagrin - and later wrestling with a giant octopus. Also that year, he was directed by Billy Wilder in a charming comedy, The Major and the Minor (1942) (co-starred with Ginger Rogers), for which he garnered good notices from Bosley Crowther of the New York Times. Ray then played a ghost hunter in The Uninvited (1944), and the suave hero caught in a web of espionage in Fritz Lang's thriller Ministry of Fear (1944).

On the strength of his previous role as "Major Kirby", Billy Wilder chose to cast Ray against type in the ground-breaking drama The Lost Weekend (1945) as dipsomaniac writer "Don Birnam". Ray gave the defining performance of his career, his intensity catching critics, used to him as a lightweight leading man, by surprise. Crowther commented "Mr. Milland, in a splendid performance, catches all the ugly nature of a 'drunk', yet reveals the inner torment and degradation of a respectable man who knows his weakness and his shame" (New York Times, December 3, 1945). Arrived at the high point of his career, Ray Milland won the Oscar for Best Actor, as well as the New York Critic's Award. Rarely given such good material again, he nonetheless featured memorably in many more splendid films, often exploiting the newly discovered "darker side" of his personality: as the reporter framed for murder by Charles Laughton's heinous publishing magnate in The Big Clock (1948); as the sophisticated, manipulating art thief "Mark Bellis" in the Victorian melodrama So Evil My Love (1948) (for which producer Hal B. Wallis sent him back to England); as a Fedora-wearing, Armani-suited "Lucifer", trawling for the soul of an honest District Attorney in Alias Nick Beal (1949); and as a traitorous scientist in The Thief (1952), giving what critics described as a "sensitive" and "towering" performance. In 1954, Ray played calculating ex-tennis champ "Tony Wendice", who blackmails a former Cambridge chump into murdering his wife, in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954). He played the part with urbane sophistication and cold detachment throughout, even in the scene of denouement, calmly offering a drink to the arresting officers.

With Lisbon (1956), Ray Milland moved into another direction, turning out several off-beat, low-budget films with himself as the lead, notably High Flight (1957), The Safecracker (1958) and Panic in Year Zero! (1962). At the same time, he cheerfully made the transition to character parts, often in horror and sci-fi outings. In accordance with his own dictum of appearing in anything that had "any originality", he worked on two notable pictures with Roger Corman: first, as a man obsessed with catalepsy in The Premature Burial (1962); secondly, as obsessed self-destructive surgeon "Dr. Xavier" in X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)-the Man with X-Ray Eyes, a film which, despite its low budget, won the 1963 Golden Asteroid in the Trieste Festival for Science Fiction.

As the years went on, Ray gradually disposed of his long-standing toupee, lending dignity through his presence to many run-of-the-mill television films, such as Cave in! (1983) and maudlin melodramas like Love Story (1970). He guest-starred in many anthology series on television and had notable roles in Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969) and the original Battlestar Galactica (1978) (as Quorum member Sire Uri). He also enjoyed a brief run on Broadway, starring as "Simon Crawford" in "Hostile Witness" (1966), at the Music Box Theatre.

In his private life, Ray was an enthusiastic yachtsman, who loved fishing and collecting information by reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica. In later years, he became very popular with interviewers because of his candid spontaneity and humour. In the same self-deprecating vein he wrote an anecdotal biography, "Wide-Eyed in Babylon", in 1976. A film star, as well as an outstanding actor, Ray Milland died of cancer at the age of 79 in March 1986.

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.

Rick Springfield was born Richard Lewis Springthorpe in Guildford, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, to Eileen Louise (Evennett) and Norman James Springthorpe, a Lt. Colonel in the Australian Army. His maternal grandparents were English, and his father was of English and some Scottish descent. Rick spent his childhood on various army bases in Australia and Britain. As a teenager, he fronted many music bands, such as the "Jordy Boys", "Wakedy Wak", and "Zoot". The latter was his most successful, paving his way for future success as a musician. He came to the U.S. early 1970s, and recorded an album, Beginnings. It had one "major" hit - Speak to The Sky. After that came "Comic Book Heroes", which was marginally successful.

He learned to speak English with an American accent to further his acting career, after he lost his record label. While he waited for his big break, he signed a contract with Universal television, playing bit parts in shows such as The Six Million Dollar Man (1974) and The Rockford Files (1974). He also had a recurring role on the soap The Young and the Restless (1973). In the early 1980s, his luck changed as he signed to RCA Records and was then cast as "Dr. Noah Drake" on the soap General Hospital (1963). While he had released six albums in the 1970s, his 1980 break-through album "Working Class Dog" gave him the #1 single "Jessie's Girl". From the music and TV exposure, he became a teen idol. He continued to star on "GH" while touring and releasing "Success Hasn't Spoiled Me Yet", with the hit "Don't Talk To Strangers". Upon releasing his 3rd album with RCA-"Living In Oz" he quit "GH" and went back to his rock roots. "Living In Oz" is considered by many his finest (and hardest rock) album. He starred in the movie Hard to Hold (1984) in 1984 and released the soundtrack to it with the hit "Love Somebody", followed by "Don't Walk Away" and "Bop Til Ya Drop". His next album, "Tao", started his slow descent from rock star status. It was followed up in 1988 by "Rock Of Life" which was his 'moodiest' and least recognized album (by the public).

In 2015, Rick received positive notices playing Meryl Streep's character's boyfriend in Ricki and the Flash (2015).

Fred Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Johanna (Geilus) and Fritz Austerlitz, a brewer. Fred entered show business at age 5. He was successful both in vaudeville and on Broadway in partnership with his sister, Adele Astaire. After Adele retired to marry in 1932, Astaire headed to Hollywood. Signed to RKO, he was loaned to MGM to appear in Dancing Lady (1933) before starting work on RKO's Flying Down to Rio (1933). In the latter film, he began his highly successful partnership with Ginger Rogers, with whom he danced in 9 RKO pictures. During these years, he was also active in recording and radio. On film, Astaire later appeared opposite a number of partners through various studios. After a temporary retirement in 1945-7, during which he opened Fred Astaire Dance Studios, Astaire returned to film to star in more musicals through 1957. He subsequently performed a number of straight dramatic roles in film and TV.

Rance Howard was born on 17 November 1928 in Duncan, Oklahoma, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Nebraska (2013), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) and Universal Soldier (1992). He was married to Judy Howard and Jean Speegle Howard. He died on 25 November 2017 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

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.

Ken Swofford was born on 25 July 1933 in Du Quoin, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Annie (1982), The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Black Roses (1988). He was married to Barbara Ann Biggs. He died on 1 November 2018 in Pacific Grove, California, USA.

John de Lancie was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended Kent State University where he won a scholarship to Juilliard. John's father was a professional oboist with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. de Lancie is probably best known for his portrayal as Eugene Bradford on Days of Our Lives (1965) and the iconic, all-powerful Q on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987).

Ray Bolger was born Raymond Wallace Bolger in Dorchester, Massachusetts, to Anne C. (Wallace) and James Edward Bolger, both Irish-Americans. Ray began his career in vaudeville. He was half of a team called "Sanford and Bolger" and also did numerous Broadway shows on his own. Like Gene Kelly, he was a song-and-dance man as well as an actor. He was signed to a contract with MGM and his first role was as himself in The Great Ziegfeld (1936). This was soon followed by a role opposite Eleanor Powell in the romantic comedy Rosalie (1937). His first dancing and singing role was in Sweethearts (1938), where he did the "wooden shoes" number with redheaded soprano/actress Jeanette MacDonald. This got him noticed by MGM producers and resulted in his being cast in his most famous role, the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Surprisingly, even though the film was a success, Bolger's contract with MGM ended. He went to RKO Radio Pictures to make the romantic comedy Four Jacks and a Jill (1942). After this, Bolger went to Broadway, where he received his greatest satisfaction. In 1953, he turned to television and received his own sitcom, Where's Raymond? (1953), later changed to "The Ray Bolger Show". After his series ended, Bolger had small roles in movies and guest starred on television series such as The Love Boat (1977), Little House on the Prairie (1974), Fantasy Island (1977), Battlestar Galactica (1978), and Diff'rent Strokes (1978). In 1985, he co-hosted the documentary film That's Dancing! (1985) with Liza Minnelli. Ray Bolger died of bladder cancer in Los Angeles, California on January 15, 1987, five days after his 83rd birthday.