"60"

Reading about Jane Fonda, you quickly recognize that there’s enough incident and achievement in her 78 years to fill three lives. She was in fact famous for three things: acting, activism, and launching the fitness craze that’s helped countless baby boomers stay fit and healthy into their senior years.

Gloria Grahame never quite became a star in Hollywood, but she sure left her mark. If you’re a fan of film noir, you know her already. This shadowy world of double-and triple-crosses was where she thrived. Still, even casual fans of older films will remember that face, that voice, that look.

He was not the most exciting, dynamic star of his day. He had a casual air, a matter-of-fact delivery, and looked like a Regular Joe: tall, nice looking, but hardly sexy. He never took an acting lesson, and was never nominated for an Oscar.

Growing up in the early ‘60s, I had a huge crush on Donna Reed. I know I wasn’t alone. In those pre-feminist days, she seemed to my young, impressionable eyes like the perfect wife and mother. Yes, she was beautiful, but there was much more to her than that. She projected an inner calm and wisdom. You sensed strength and principle beyond her dazzling smile. She was no pushover. You loved her, but you also respected her. You didn’t mess with Donna Reed.

Any list of the twentieth century’s finest actors is incomplete without Alec Guinness. Yet it’s a name some might overlook because there was never anything remotely showy — or even particularly magnetic — about him.

Though successful on release, this indelible classic from 1942 truly entered the zeitgeist in the late 50’s and early ‘60s, when a whole new generation of viewers, specifically Harvard students, fell in love with it.

In 1962, Bette Davis received her last Best Actress Oscar nomination for the deliciously campy “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane,” and decided to size up her competition. On seeing Lee Remick’s performance as a fresh-faced young woman turned full-blown alcoholic in “Days Of Wine And Roses,” the veteran star, not known for gushing, was heard to say:  “Miss Remick's performance astonished me, and I thought, if I lose the Oscar, it will be to her."

Myrna Loy is one of those stars whose appeal is timeless. Across the decades, her beautiful eyes project a keen intelligence and self-assurance. It was no illusion.

It's sad that many people today think of the late actor Rock Hudson only as an early symbol of the AIDS crisis. That of course he was, being the first truly famous person to be stricken with the disease back in 1985. But he was also a lot more than that.