By JULIAN GUTHRIE, San Francisco Chronicle

Rita Moreno dated Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley and Howard Hughes, and was called a "Spanish Elizabeth Taylor" by MGM head Louis B. Mayer.

One of the few entertainers to garner an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy, she blossomed during the Golden Age of Hollywood, when Gene Kelly, Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor were the stars of the screen.

SAN FRANCISCO - In the wild, he would have been someone's lunch. But at the California Academy of Sciences, Claude the albino alligator is a star.

He gets three private training sessions a week, followed by 15 fish pellets. The food is tossed inches from his jaw, so he doesn't have to search. His favorite rock is heated to varying temperatures, from 78 degrees to 95 degrees.

It's been nearly 40 years since Rosalynn Carter met a weary and stooped woman leaving her night-shift job at a cotton mill in Georgia. The woman told Carter, who was campaigning for her husband, Jimmy, then running for governor, that she was heading home to care for her mentally ill daughter.

SAN FRANCISCO - The morning fog had given way to cool sunshine, and the diminutive, stylish woman took her place at the start of a labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. She began to narrate -- her soothing voice mixing with the sounds of children playing in a park.

LaMott Atkins was 40 when he went to his first yoga class. The former track star and running back at Stanford was immediately hooked -- he had found something that he couldn't do.

Ten years later, Atkins is one of the San Francisco Bay Area's most popular yoga teachers, and he uses his Bikram studio to bring improved health and peace of mind to anyone who walks through the door.

Toward the end of writer Jack Kerouac's life, the so-called King of the Beats was having trouble paying his mortgage. Upon his death in 1969, his estate was valued at $91 -- compared with around $20 million today.

The film "Adam" is a departure for British actor Hugh Dancy, best known for playing Prince Charmont in "Ella Enchanted," the handsome love interest in "Confessions of a Shopaholic" and the handsome love interest and nerd in "The Jane Austen Book Club."

In some ways, Rich Lewetzow is a typical high-school senior: He gets into spats with his mom, waits until the last minute to do his homework and stays out too late with friends on weekends.
But in other ways, Lewetzow is unique: He spends more time on Zillow than Facebook, is too busy for a girlfriend and frequents open houses on Sundays.

Dan Frakes' 3-year-old daughter likes to play in the sand, finger paint and sing along to "The Wheels on the Bus."
The preschooler can do these things the good old-fashioned way. She can also do them in a decidedly new way: by using Dad's iPhone.

A terrible accident led Mike McArdle to launch a new business, one that has seen revenues double and yielded unimagined perks -- including a role for himself and his art in a major new feature film.