Fixed Bayonets! 1951 premiere

1. Richard Basehart

Despite many a powerful performance, this actor's actor never quite achieved the stardom he deserved. Ultimately, Richard Basehart became best-known to television audiences as Admiral Harriman Nelson, commander of the glass-nosed nuclear submarine 'S.S.R.N Seaview' in Irwin Allen's Voyage to the ...

2. Dana Andrews

Actor | Laura

American leading man of the 1940s and 1950s, Dana Andrews was born Carver Dana Andrews on New Years Day 1909 on a farmstead outside Collins, Covington County, Mississippi. One of thirteen children, including fellow actor Steve Forrest, he was a son of Annis (Speed) and Charles Forrest Andrews, a ...

3. Barbara Bates

Actress | All About Eve

Born in Denver, Co, 6 August, 1925 and originally named Barbara Jane Bates, Barbara was the eldest of 3 daughters born to a postal clerk and RN.

Rather shy, her mother initially sent Barbara to study ballet. By her late teens, the young beauty began to model clothes as a teen out of high school.

...

4. Anne Baxter

Actress | All About Eve

Anne Baxter was born in Michigan City, Indiana, on May 7, 1923. She was the daughter of a salesman, Kenneth Stuart Baxter, and his wife, Catherine Dorothy (Wright), who herself was the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, the world-renowned architect. Anne was a young girl of 11 when her parents moved ...

5. Joan Bennett

Actress | Suspiria

Joan Geraldine Bennett was born on February 27, 1910, in Palisades, New Jersey. Her parents were both successful stage actors, especially her father, Richard Bennett, and often toured the country for weeks at a time. In fact, Joan came from a long line of actors, dating back to the 18th century. ...

6. Corinne Calvet

Actress | Rope of Sand

Petite, seductive French leading lady who underwent several early career changes before settling on the acting profession. Corinne Calvet first studied criminal law at France's renowned Sorbonne, but then turned her attention to interior decoration specializing in fine arts and antiques. After ...

7. Cyd Charisse

Actress | Silk Stockings

Cyd Charisse was born Tula Ellice Finklea on March 8, 1922, in Amarillo, Texas. Born to be a dancer, she spent her early childhood taking ballet lessons and joined the Ballet Russe at age 13. In 1939, she married Nico Charisse, her former dance teacher. In 1943, she appeared in her first film, ...

8. Jeanne Crain

Actress | Pinky

Jeanne Crain was born in Barstow, California, on May 25, 1925. The daughter of a high school English teacher and his wife, Jeanne was moved to Los Angeles not long after her birth after her father got another teaching position in that city. While in junior high school, Jeanne played the lead in a ...

9. Dan Dailey

Actor | The Governor & J.J.

Born in New York City, Dan Dailey started his career in vaudeville, later making his Broadway debut in the stage version of "Babes in Arms".

When signed to MGM, the studio initially casted him as a Nazi in The Mortal Storm (1940). The studio realized their mistake and cast him in musical films, ...

10. Gene Evans

Actor | Ace in the Hole

Gene Evans was born in Holbrook, Arizona, on July 11, 1922, and was raised in Colton, California. He served in the Army during World War II as a combat engineer, and was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for bravery in action. He began his acting career there, performing in a theatrical ...

11. Anne Francis

Actress | Forbidden Planet

Anne Francis got into show business quite early in life. She was born on September 16, 1930 in Ossining, New York (which is near Sing Sing prison), the only child of Phillip Ward Francis, a businessman/salesman, and the former Edith Albertson. A natural little beauty, she became a John Robert Powers...

12. Mitzi Gaynor

Actress | South Pacific

It is perhaps ironic that the film for which this performer is best remembered was also her musical swansong and one of her very last motion picture appearances. That was, of course, South Pacific (1958), with Mitzi Gaynor famously cast as feisty Ensign Nellie Forbush, warbling "I'm Gonna Wash That...

13. Betty Grable

Actress | How to Marry a Millionaire

Elizabeth Ruth Grable was born on December 18, 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri, to Lillian Rose (Hofmann) and John Conn Grable, a stockbroker. She had German, English, Irish, and Dutch ancestry. Her mother was a stubborn and materialistic woman determined to make her daughter a star. Elizabeth, who ...

14. June Haver

Actress | The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady

June Haver was born on June 10, 1926, in Rock Island, Illinois, with the birth name of Beverly June Stovenour. Her parents divorced at an early age and she was adopted by Bert Haver, her stepfather. Her mother and new father moved to Cincinnati, where she appeared on the stage for the first time at...

15. Susan Hayward

Actress | With a Song in My Heart

Susan Hayward was born Edythe Marrener in Brooklyn, New York, on June 30, 1917. Her father was a transportation worker, and Susan lived a fairly comfortable life as a child, but the precocious little redhead had no idea of the life that awaited her. She attended public school in Brooklyn, where she...

16. Jeffrey Hunter

Actor | The Searchers

Jeffrey Hunter was born Henry Herman McKinnies Jr. on November 25, 1926 in New Orleans, Louisiana, an only child. His parents met at the University of Arkansas, and when he was almost four his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In his teens, he acted in productions of the North Shore Children's ...

17. Richard Hylton

Actor | The Secret of Convict Lake

Richard Hylton was born on December 11, 1920 in Collinsville, Oklahoma, USA. He was an actor, known for The Secret of Convict Lake (1951), Halls of Montezuma (1951) and Fixed Bayonets! (1951). He died on May 12, 1962 in San Francisco, California, USA.

18. William Lundigan

Actor | Pinky

The athletic William Lundigan stood 6' 2" and weighed 170 pounds. He played football, basketball and tennis at Syracuse (NY) University. He was discovered by Charles R. Rogers, head of production at Universal Studios. Rogers happened to tune into radio station WFBL in Syracuse. He was so intrigued ...

19. James Mason

Actor | Lolita

James Mason was born in Huddersfield and had a film career spanning over 50 years during which he appeared in over 100 films in England and America but never won an Oscar. Whatever role he played, from the wounded Belfast gunman in Odd Man Out to Rommel in The Desert Fox, his creamy velvet voice ...

20. Victor Mature

Actor | The Robe

American leading man Victor John Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Clara P. (Ackley) and Marcellus George Mature, a cutler and knife sharpener. His father, born Marcello Gelindo Maturi in Pinzolo, Trentino, was Italian, and his mother was of Swiss-German and German descent. Mature worked ...

21. Virginia Mayo

Actress | White Heat

Virginia Clara Jones was born on November 30, 1920 in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a newspaper reporter and his wife. The family had a rich heritage in the St. Louis area: her great-great-great-grandfather served in the American Revolution and later founded the city of East Saint Louis, ...

22. Joyce Mackenzie

Actress | Destination Murder

This starlet of the early 50s once self-deprecatingly described herself as "a poor man's movie star". She was born Joyce Elaine Mackenzie in Redwood, California, a doctor's daughter. During the war years her sobriquet was 'Joyce the Joiner', toiling as a carpenter's assistant at the shipbuilding ...

23. Michael O'Shea

Actor | Lady of Burlesque

His five brothers all became policemen, encouraged on by their father, but Hartford-born Irish-American Michael O'Shea defied family tradition and turned to acting. Born on March 17, 1906, Michael dropped out of school at age 12 and went the vaudeville route, touring with his boxing idol Jack ...

24. Debra Paget

Actress | The Ten Commandments

An acting career was always in the cards for Debra Paget (nee Debralee Griffin) and her siblings, coming from a show biz family and being the offspring of a "stage mother" anxious to get her kids into the movies. Paget's sister Teala Loring got her movie breaks in the 1940s, Lisa Gaye was a film ...

25. 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...

26. Jean Peters

Actress | Pickup on South Street

Green-eyed beauty Jean Elizabeth Peters flashed across the screen as a bright star during her relatively brief tenure in Hollywood. After just seven years under contract to 20th Century-Fox (1947-54), she joined in the reclusive lifestyle of her eccentric billionaire husband, Howard Hughes, and all...

27. Helene Stanley

Actress | Bandit King of Texas

Dolores Diane (her first stage name) made her film debut at age 14 in Girls' Town (1942), a "B" picture from low-rent PRC, then played a series of juvenile roles at Universal in 1943-45 (sometimes as part of a teen dancing group known as The Jivin' Jacks and Jills). She worked at MGM (where her ...

28. David Wayne

Actor | The Andromeda Strain

His father was an insurance executive; his mother died when he was four. He attended Western Michigan University then worked as a statistician in Cleveland where he joined a Shakespeare repertory company. Two years later he had a minor role in "The American Way" in New York. He was rejected by the ...

29. Clifton Webb

Actor | Laura

Already trained in dance and theater, he quit school at age 13 to study music and painting. By 19 he was a professional ballroom dancer in New York, and by his mid-twenties he was performing in musicals, dramas on Broadway and in London, and in silent movies. His first real success in film came in ...

30. Richard Widmark

Actor | Kiss of Death

Richard Widmark established himself as an icon of American cinema with his debut in the 1947 film noir Kiss of Death (1947), in which he won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination as the killer Tommy Udo. Kiss of Death (1947) and other noir thrillers established Widmark as part of a new ...

31. George Jessel

Actor | Lucky Boy

George Jessel gained fame in vaudeville, where it was not uncommon for him--and other performers, such as Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor--to perform in blackface, and in fact at age 11 Jessel was Cantor's vaudeville partner. Jessel acted in several movies in the '30s and became a respected film producer. ...

32. Tony Martin

Soundtrack | The Big Store

Born Alvin Morris, the son of immigrants from Poland, Tony Martin received a soprano saxophone on his tenth birthday. In his grammar school glee club, he became an instrumentalist and soprano pop singer. When in high school, he then formed his first band called "The Red Peppers", eventually joining...

33. Skip Homeier

Actor | The Gunfighter

A prolific young performer, child/juvenile Skippy Homeier was born George Vincent Homeier on October 5, 1930. Beginning on radio in his native Chicago at age six ("Portia Faces Life"), he came to films at age 14 with Tomorrow, the World! (1944), which was originally a 1943 Broadway drama starring ...

34. David Wolfson

Actor | Dragnet

David Wolfson is known for Dragnet (1951).

35. Henry Kulky

Actor | Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Henry Kulky was born on August 11, 1911 in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964), Love Nest (1951) and Target Hong Kong (1953). He died on February 12, 1965 in Oceanside, California, USA.

36. Craig Hill

Actor | The Black Shield of Falworth

Craig Hill was born on March 5, 1926 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), All About Eve (1950) and Flight That Disappeared (1961). He was married to Teresa Gimpera. He died on April 21, 2014 in Barcelona, Spain.

37. James Dean

Actor | East of Eden

James Byron Dean was born February 8, 1931 in Marion, Indiana, to Mildred Marie (Wilson) and Winton A. Dean, a farmer turned dental technician. His mother died when Dean was nine, and he was subsequently raised on a farm by his aunt and uncle in Fairmount, Indiana. After grade school, he moved to ...

38. Samuel Fuller

Writer | Shock Corridor

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 ...

39. Jules Buck

Producer | Brute Force

Jules Buck was born on July 30, 1917 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He was a producer and cinematographer, known for Brute Force (1947), The Naked City (1948) and The Killers (1946). He was married to Joyce Gates. He died on July 19, 2001 in Paris, France.

40. Lamar Trotti

Writer | Yellow Sky

Author and screenwriter, often preoccupied with American history as viewed from a Southern perspective. Born in Atlanta, Trotti studied writing at Columbia University and was also the first person to graduate from the University of Georgia's Henry Grady School of Journalism. In 1923, he became the ...

41. Roy Webb

Composer | Notorious

Trained in classical music at Columbia University, Webb worked on Broadway by the time he was in his mid-20's, not only composing incidental music, but co-writing original plays with his older brother, the director Kenneth S. Webb. By 1923, he worked as conductor/arranger on hit shows like "Music ...

42. Lucien Ballard

Cinematographer | The Wild Bunch

Lucien Ballard, the cinematographer best known for his collaboration with director Sam Peckinpah on such films as The Wild Bunch (1969), was born in Miami, Oklahoma. Ballard became a wanderer after dropping out of the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania and the University of Oklahoma, journeying ...

43. Nick DeMaggio

Editor | Night and the City

Nick DeMaggio was born on December 27, 1890 in Costa Mesa, California, USA. He was an editor, known for Night and the City (1950), Pickup on South Street (1953) and The Bride Wore Crutches (1940). He died on January 23, 1981 in Costa Mesa, California, USA.