The Agony and the Ecstasy 1965 premiere

1. Charlton Heston

Actor | Ben-Hur

With features chiseled in stone, and renowned for playing a long list of historical figures, particularly in Biblical epics, the tall, well-built and ruggedly handsome Charlton Heston was one of Hollywood's top leading men of his prime and remained active in front of movie cameras for over sixty ...

2. Rex Harrison

Actor | My Fair Lady

Rex Harrison was born Reginald Carey Harrison in Huyton, Lancashire, England, to Edith Mary (Carey) and William Reginald Harrison, a cotton broker. He changed his name to Rex as a young boy, knowing it was the Latin word for "King". Starting out on his theater career at age 18, his first job at the ...

3. Steve Allen

Actor | Casino

Steve Allen was born on December 26, 1921 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Casino (1995), The Player (1992) and College Confidential (1960). He was married to Jayne Meadows and Dorothy Goodman. He died on October 30, 2000 in Encino, Los Angeles, California, USA.

4. Indus Arthur

Actress | MASH

Indus Arthur was born on April 28, 1941 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for M*A*S*H (1970), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962) and Ben Casey (1961). She died on December 29, 1984 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.

5. Jim Backus

Actor | Rebel Without a Cause

Jim Backus was born James Gilmore Backus on February 25, 1913 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was one of the few actors to do it all: radio, Broadway, movies, television and cartoons. After attending preparatory school in his hometown Cleveland, Backus enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Art, to ...

6. Stephen Boyd

Actor | Ben-Hur

Stephen Boyd was born William Millar on July 4, 1931, at Glengormley, Northern Ireland, one of nine children of Martha Boyd and Canadian truck driver James Alexander Millar, who worked for Fleming's on Tomb Street in Belfast. He attended Glengormley & Ballyrobert primary school and then moved on to...

7. Jerry Lewis

Actor | The Nutty Professor

Jerry Lewis (born March 16, 1926 - August 20, 2017) was an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team ...

8. Lee J. Cobb

Actor | 12 Angry Men

Lee J. Cobb, one of the premier character actors in American film for three decades in the post-World War II period, was born Leo Jacoby in New York City's Lower East Side on December 8, 1911. The son of a Jewish newspaper editor, young Leo was a child prodigy in music, mastering the violin and the...

9. Kirk Douglas

Actor | The Final Countdown

Cleft-chinned, steely-eyed and virile star of international cinema who rose from being "the ragman's son" (the name of his best-selling 1988 autobiography) to become a bona fide superstar, Kirk Douglas, also known as Issur Danielovitch Demsky, was born on December 9, 1916 in Amsterdam, New York. ...

10. Chad Everett

Actor | Mulholland Dr.

Both a leading and a supporting actor in movies and on television, name a role - lawyer, airline pilot, rig foreman, doctor, gunslinger, real-life person, good guy, bad guy - and Chad Everett has probably played it. He was born Raymon Lee Cramton on June 11, 1937 in South Bend, Indiana. In high ...

11. Eddie Fisher

Soundtrack | Carol

In 1953 Eddie Fisher was given his own fifteen-minute TV show called Coke Time (1953), sponsored by the Coca-Cola company. This show proved to be so popular that Coke then offered Eddie a $1 million contract to be their national spokesperson. A deal of that magnitude was almost unheard of at this ...

12. Kay Williams

Actress | The Actress

Kay Williams was born on August 7, 1916 in Erie, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for The Actress (1953). She was married to Clark Gable, Adolph Bernard Spreckels II, Martin de Alzaga Unzue and Charles Parker Capps. She died on May 25, 1983 in Houston, Texas, USA.

13. Rhonda Fleming

Actress | Out of the Past

A native-born Californian, Rhonda Fleming attended Beverly Hills public and private schools. Her father was Harold Cheverton Louis (1896-1951). Her mother, Effie Olivia Graham (1891-1985), was a famous model and actress in New York. She has a son (Kent Lane), two granddaughters (Kimberly and Kelly)...

14. Zsa Zsa Gabor

Actress | A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Undoubtedly the woman who had come to epitomize what we recognize today as "celebrity," Zsa Zsa Gabor, is better known for her many marriages, personal appearances, her "dahlink" catchphrase, her actions, gossip, and quotations on men, rather than her film career.

Zsa Zsa was born as Sári Gabor on ...

15. Gila Golan

Actress | Our Man Flint

Gila Golan's career started as an Israeli fashion model, which led to appearances as a film actress. She was apparently born in Krakow, Poland, for she was discovered there in a train station during the German occupation in 1940. She was adopted by a Roman Catholic couple and later sent to a ...

16. Arthur Godfrey

Actor | The Glass Bottom Boat

Arthur Godfrey was born in New York City on August 31, 1903. Mr. Godfrey was a radio and TV host and had his own television show The Arthur Godfrey Show, (1948-1959). During his career, he discovered and show cased many new talents including Pat Boone, Julius LaRosa, Marion Marlowe, and many others...

17. Shelby Grant

Actress | Our Man Flint

Shelby Grant was born on October 19, 1936 in Orlando, Oklahoma, USA. She was an actress, known for Our Man Flint (1966), Burke's Law (1963) and Fantastic Voyage (1966). She was married to Chad Everett and Daniel Eugene Smith. She died on June 25, 2011 in Westlake Village, California, USA.

18. Gene Kelly

Soundtrack | Singin' in the Rain

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...

19. Peter Lawford

Actor | The Longest Day

Born in London, England and son of a British World War I hero, Lawford had spent most of his childhood in Paris, France and began his acting career at a very young age. His parents were not married when their son was born. As a result of the scandal, The Lawfords fled to America.

As a young child, ...

20. Trini López

Actor | The Dirty Dozen

Trini Lopez was an American singer and actor who had 16 Top 40 songs on the charts from 1963 through 1968. He was born Trinidad López III in the Little Mexico neighborhood of Dallas, Texas on May 15, 1937. He started performing with his own band when he was 15 years old and caught the eye of rock ...

21. Audrey Meadows

Actress | The Honeymooners

Audrey Meadows was born in New York City as Audrey Cotter, the youngest of four children. After she was born, her family returned to Wu'chang, China, where they worked as missionaries. Her family returned to the US and settled in New England when Audrey was age 6, and she and sister Jayne Meadows ...

22. Jayne Meadows

Actress | City Slickers

One of four children (two older brothers, one younger sister) born to American missionaries, Jayne Meadows (née Jane Cotter) was born September 27, 1919, in China. The family returned to the US in the early 1930s wherein Jayne was forced to learn the English language, speaking Chinese and other ...

23. Robert Mitchum

Actor | Out of the Past

Robert Mitchum was an underrated American leading man of enormous ability, who sublimated his talents beneath an air of disinterest. He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Ann Harriet (Gunderson), a Norwegian immigrant, and James Thomas Mitchum, a shipyard/railroad worker. His father died in a ...

24. Agnes Moorehead

Actress | The Magnificent Ambersons

Agnes was born of Anglo-Irish ancestry near Boston, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister (her mother was a mezzo-soprano) who encouraged her to perform in church pageants. Aged three, she sang 'The Lord is my Shepherd' on a public stage and seven years later joined the St. Louis Municipal Opera ...

25. Ken Murray

Actor | The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

He wasn't a natural, instinctive talent but entertainer Ken Murray had solid breeding to rely on. Born in 1903 in New York City, his father was a vaudeville comic and Ken taught himself to dance, sing, tell jokes, and even perform rope tricks to try and get ahead. It paid off. Touring in an act ...

26. Merle Oberon

Actress | Wuthering Heights

Estelle Merle Thompson was born in India on February 19, 1911 of Welsh and Ceylonese (now Sri Lankan) descent. She was educated in that country until the age of 17, when she left for London. She began her career in British films with mostly forgettable roles or bit parts. She appeared in an ...

27. Gregory Peck

Actor | To Kill a Mockingbird

Eldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916 in La Jolla, California, to Bernice Mae (Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist and druggist in San Diego. He had Irish (from his paternal grandmother), English, and some German, ancestry. His parents divorced when he was five years old. An only child...

28. Edward G. Robinson

Actor | Double Indemnity

Emanuel Goldenberg arrived in the United States from Romania at age ten, and his family moved into New York's Lower East Side. He took up acting while attending City College, abandoning plans to become a rabbi or lawyer. The American Academy of Dramatic Arts awarded him a scholarship, and he began ...

29. Cesar Romero

Actor | Batman: The Movie

Tall, suave and sophisticated Cesar Romero actually had two claims to fame in Hollywood. To one generation, he was the distinguished Latin lover of numerous musicals and romantic comedies, and the rogue bandit The Cisco Kid in a string of low-budget westerns. However, to a younger generation weaned...

30. Rosalind Russell

Actress | Auntie Mame

The middle of seven children, she was named, not for the heroine of "As You Like It" but for the S.S. Rosalind on which her parents had sailed, at the suggestion of her father, a successful lawyer.

After receiving a Catholic school education, she went to the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New ...

31. Pierre Salinger

Actor | The Marseille Contract

Pierre Salinger was born on June 14, 1925 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for The Destructors (1974), Les dossiers de l'écran (1967) and Jack: The Last Kennedy Film (1993). He was married to Nicole Beuvillain de Menthon, Nicole Helene Gillmann, Nancy Brook...

32. Rod Serling

Writer | The Twilight Zone

A former boxer, paratrooper and general all-around angry young man, Rod Serling was one of the radical new voices that made the "Golden Age" of television. Long before The Twilight Zone (1959), he was known for writing such high-quality scripts as "Patterns" and "Requiem for a Heavyweight," both ...

33. Roger Smith

Actor | Auntie Mame

Debonair, dark-haired, exceedingly handsome Roger LaVerne Smith was born in South Gate, California to Dallas and Leone Smith on December 18, 1932. At age 6, his parents enrolled him at a professional school for singing, elocution and dancing lessons. By age 12, the family moved to Nogales, Arizona,...

34. Inger Stevens

Actress | Hang 'Em High

This enigmatic Stockholm-born beauty had everything going for her, including a rapidly rising film and TV career. Yet on April 30, 1970, at only 35, Inger Stevens would become another tragic Hollywood statistic -- added proof that fame and fortune do not always lead to happiness. Over time, a ...

35. Robert Stack

Actor | Written on the Wind

"Straight Shooting" -- whether skeet shooting, or portraying Eliot Ness -- Robert Stack always told it like it was, and shot straight. Born in Los Angeles, California, the younger son of James Langford Stack (1860-1928), the owner of an advertising agency, and Mary Elizabeth Modini Wood (1891-1975)...

36. Martin West

Actor | Assault on Precinct 13

Actor Martin West (born Martin Weixelbaum) began appearing in feature films and on television in 1960 with Freckles (1960). In 1966, he played Dr. Phil Brewer on the daytime soap opera General Hospital (1963), becoming the fifth actor to play the role. In 1965, he was featured in Harper (1966), ...

37. Andy Williams

Soundtrack | Nobody

The extraordinary, easy-listening crooning talents of Andy Williams were first unveiled when he was 8 years old and inducted into the Williams Brothers Quartet as its youngest member. Born in Wall Lake, Iowa on December 3, 1927, Andy started singing with his three older brothers (Bob Williams, Dick...

38. Gig Young

Actor | They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Gig Young was born Byron Barr to parents John and Emma Barr in Minnesota, and raised in Washington, DC, where he developed a passion for theatre while appearing in high school plays. After gaining some amateur experience, he applied for and received a scholarship to the acclaimed Southern ...

39. Army Archerd

Actor | Escape from the Planet of the Apes

Army Archerd was born on January 13, 1922 in Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Burke's Law (1963) and Gable and Lombard (1976). He was married to Selma Archerd and Joan Carol Paul. He died on September 8, 2009 in ...

40. Henny Backus

Actress | Meet Me in Las Vegas

Henny Backus was born on March 21, 1911 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956), Gilligan's Island (1964) and Blondie (1968). She was married to Jim Backus. She died on December 9, 2004 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

41. Robert Six

Camera_department | Airborne

Robert Six is known for Airborne (1962).

42. Richard D. Zanuck

Producer | Driving Miss Daisy

Richard D. Zanuck was born on December 13, 1934 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a producer and production manager, known for Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Cocoon (1985) and Deep Impact (1998). He was married to Lili Fini Zanuck, Linda Harrison and Lili Gentle. He died on July 13, 2012 in ...

43. Robert Weitman

Producer | The Anderson Tapes

Robert Weitman was born in 1905 in Manhattan, New York, USA. He was a producer, known for The Anderson Tapes (1971), Shamus (1973) and A Matter of Wife... and Death (1975). He died in January 1989 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.

44. Jack L. Warner

Producer | My Fair Lady

With his brothers Harry M. Warner, Albert Warner, and Sam Warner, he founded Warner Bros. Pictures Inc. in 1923. They released the first motion picture with synchronized sound, The Jazz Singer (1927) with Al Jolson. In the 1930s they gave employment to a parade of stars, including Bette Davis, ...

45. Howard W. Koch

Producer | The Manchurian Candidate

Getting his start in the movie business in Universal's contract and playdate department in New York City, Howard W. Koch moved on to 20th Century-Fox as a film librarian and then entered production as second assistant director on The Keys of the Kingdom (1944). After many films as assistant ...

46. Tom McDermott

Producer | Concerning Miss Marlowe

A legendary pioneer of early television in America, Tom McDermott was responsible for creating, writing, directing, and producing many iconic television shows. McDermott began his career in New York City in the 1940's at advertising agency Benton & Bowles, which produced television shows for their ...

47. Saul David

Entebbe

Saul David is known for 7 Days in Entebbe (2018), Without Walls (1990) and The British (2012).

48. Charles Skouras

49. Frederick De Cordova

Producer | The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

Educated at Northwestern University, Frederick De Cordova began his show business career on the stage, and came to Hollywood in the mid-'40s as a dialogue director. He graduated to director in 1945. He spent much of his career at Universal Pictures, where he turned out medium-budget westerns, ...

50. Delmer Daves

Writer | An Affair to Remember

Although Delmer Daves obtained a law degree at Stanford University, he never had the opportunity to use it; while still in college, he obtained a job as a prop boy on The Covered Wagon (1923) and after graduation was hired by several film companies as a technical advisor on films with a college ...

51. Louis L'Amour

Writer | Hondo

Louis L'Amour was born on March 22, 1908 in Jamestown, North Dakota, USA. He was a writer, known for Hondo (1953), East of Sumatra (1953) and Apache Territory (1958). He was married to Kathy Adams. He died on June 10, 1988 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

52. Gardner McKay

Writer | Me.

Gardner is the son of Deane McKay, an ad executive, and Catherine. He was raised in New York and Paris. He attended Cornell University two years but left when his father died. He worked in advertising for 6 months but found that he could not stand it. At age 20, he became a sculptor and had a piece...

53. Lynn Loring

Producer | Mr. Mom

Lynn Loring made an unlikely, but impressive, transition from child actress to actress to president of a major TV studio. At age 6, she appeared in CBS's anthology series Studio One (1948); at 7, she began doing TV commercials (and was dubbed "The Junior Set's Betty Furness"); and from 6 to 16, she...

54. Ann Miller

Actress | Mulholland Dr.

Ann Miller was born Johnnie Lucille Ann Collier on April 12, 1923 in Chireno, Texas. She lived there until she was nine, when her mother left her philandering father and moved with Ann to Los Angeles, California. Even at that young age, she had to support her mother, who was hearing-impaired and ...

55. Christiane Schmidtmer

Actress | The Big Doll House

Christiane Schmidtmer was born in Mannheim, Germany. She took acting lessons in Munich and worked in the stage in Germany from 1961-1963, then turned to photographic modeling for German nude magazines and later, Playboy. She also modeled for advertising companies, namely Max Factor cosmetics, ...

56. Roy Thinnes

Actor | Airport 1975

Roy was born on April 6, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois. During his formative years, he had wanted to become a doctor or football player - or, if one wants to believe his early press releases, both. He started in show business at a radio station, where he did everything: engineering, DJ shows, news and...

57. Bruno Pagliai

Self | A Bob Hope Comedy Special

Bruno Pagliai was previously married to Merle Oberon.

58. Troy Donahue

Actor | A Summer Place

Troy Donahue was a journalism student at Columbia University when he began playing in stock productions. He made his film debut in Man Afraid (1957) and in 1959 signed as a contract player with Warner Bros., which promoted him to stardom with A Summer Place (1959) that year. He was soon a teenage ...

59. Carole Wells

Actress | Pistols 'n' Petticoats

Carole started working in television and motion pictures at the age of 12. Her first commercial was Dial Soap, then cast on the "Eddie Fisher Coke Time". She played a young "Lizzy" in her first film by the same name. She continued to co-star in most of the television shows in the late fifties, ...

60. Lawrence Doheny

Director | Teenage Millionaire

Lawrence Doheny was born on April 14, 1924 in Kilmurry, County Limerick, Republic of Ireland. He was a director and writer, known for Teenage Millionaire (1961), The Six Million Dollar Man (1974) and Black Sheep Squadron (1976). He was married to Margaret Mangan. He died on September 7, 1982 in Los...

61. Freddy Martin

Actor | The Mayor of 44th Street

Freddy Martin was born on December 9, 1906 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for The Mayor of 44th Street (1942), Forbidden Zone (1980) and The Magical World of Disney (1954). He was married to E. Lillian Reardon. He died on September 30, 1983 in Newport Beach, California, USA.

62. Gloria Swanson

Actress | Sunset Boulevard

Gloria Swanson was born Gloria May Josephine Svensson in Chicago, Illinois. She was destined to be perhaps one of the biggest stars of the silent movie era. Her personality and antics in private definitely made her a favorite with America's movie-going public. Gloria certainly didn't intend on ...