Career: In Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Fonda landed his first professional role in the University Players production of The Jest. It wasn't long before he headed to New York. Along with roommate James Stewart, he developed his acting skills on Broadway and appeared in a number of stage productions between 1926 and 1934. Fonda got his big break when he made his first film appearance in The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935). His movie career took off and in 1936 he starred in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, the first Technicolor movie filmed outdoors. He went on to star in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Rings On Her Fingers (1942), and The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). He served in the Navy during the Second World War. In 1948, Fonda won a Tony Award for playing the title role in Mister Roberts, a role he would later play on the big screen in 1955. He went on to star in War in Peace (1956), The Wrong Man (1956), 12 Angry Men (1957), How the West Was Won (1962) and Spencer's Mountain (1963). Fonda continued to act throughout his final years and he won his only Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in On Golden Pond (1981). He died a year later in Los Angeles at the age of 77.

Career: Widmark was performing in a stage production in Chicago when 20th Century Fox signed him to a seven-year film contract. His first movie role was Kiss of Death (1947), a part that earned him a Golden Globe and his only Academy Award nomination. His early films were The Street with No Name (1948), Road House (1948) and Yellow Sky (1948) and he quickly developed a reputation for playing movie villains. After demanding more diverse roles, he went on play a wide range of parts in the likes of Panic in the Streets (1950), No Way Out (1950), Night and the City (1950), Broken Lance (1954), The Alamo (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and Madigan (1968). He made the transition to the small screen in 1971 with the TV movie Vanished, and he reprised his detective role from Madigan in six TV movies. After a career that had seen him star in more than 60 films, he retired from acting in 2001. After a long illness, he died in 2008 at the age of 93.