John Archer

Highest Rated: 97% White Heat (1949)

Lowest Rated: 22% Blue Hawaii (1961)

Birthday: May 8, 1915

Birthplace: Osceola, Nebraska, USA

John Archer--father of actress Anne Archer--is best known as the radio announcer for the weekly crime series "The Shadow," sinisterly intoning before every episode, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows." He was already a radio veteran by the time he worked on "The Shadow" in the mid-1940s, switching regularly between that medium and movies, but fans of Poverty Row B movies will also remember him from his starring roles in the cheapie Monogram pictures "King of the Zombies" and "Bowery at Midnight," the latter co-starring Bela Lugosi and Tom Neal. When not acting in B movies, he landed smaller supporting roles in major studio productions like the war drama "Guadalcanal Diary" and the gangster picture "White Heat." In 1950, he starred in one of the first real Hollywood science fiction movies, "Destination Moon," co-scripted by novelist Robert A. Heinlein." The movie, which at the time featured groundbreaking special effects in an effort to show what a moon landing would actually be like, won an Academy Award for visual effects and remains a historic milestone for the genre. Archer died in 1999 of lung cancer.