Trivia: Following World War II, California native Jack Webb planned to renew the art studies that he'd abandoned for the military. Instead, he turned to acting, appearing on various San Francisco-based radio programs. He briefly hosted his own satirical comedy series before finding his true metier in detective melodramas. In collaboration with future Oscar-winning screenwriter Richard L. Breen (who remained a Webb associate until his death in 1967), Webb concocted a hard-boiled private eye show entitled Pat Novak for Hire. The popularity he gained from this effort enabled Webb to secure small film roles -- one of these was as a police lab technician in the 1948 film noir He Walked by Night (1948). Intrigued by the police procedure he'd learned while preparing for the role, Webb immersed himself in the subject until he felt ready to launch what many observers still consider the first realistic radio cop show: Dragnet, which premiered June 3, 1949. Webb carried over his terse characterization of L.A. police sergeant Joe Friday into the Dragnet TV series (which he also directed) beginning in 1952. Armed with a bottomless reserve of police terminology and a colorful repertoire of catchphrases, the laconic, ferret-faced Webb became one of the most successful -- and most widely imitated -- TV personalities of the 1950s; almost always in the Top Ten, Dragnet, produced by Webb's own Mark VII Productions, ran until 1959. Webb's newfound industry clout permitted him to direct for the big screen as well -- his 1950s movie credits (outside of such pre-star efforts as The Men, Sunset Boulevard, and Halls of Montezuma) include the 1954 feature version of Dragnet, 1955's Pete Kelly's Blues (based on another of Webb's radio series), 1957's The D.I., and 1959's 30. In addition, Webb's Mark VII produced such TV series as Noah's Ark, The D.A.'s Man, and the video version of Pete Kelly's Blues. Webb kicked off the 1960s with a rare attempt at directing comedy, The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961). From 1962 through 1964, he was in charge of Warner Bros.' television division, an assignment which came to an end as a result of several failed TV ventures. A 1966 TV-movie version of Dragnet kicked off Webb's second career. He went on to star in a successful weekly Dragnet revival, which ran from 1967 through 1970, while his Mark VII outfit was responsible for a score of TV series, the most successful of which were Emergency and Adam 12. Regarded as something of a relic by the "hipper" viewers, Jack Webb nonetheless remained profitably active in television until the late '70s; he might have continued into the 1980s had not his drinking and smoking habits accelerated his death at the age of 62. Married three times, Jack Webb's first wife was singing star Julie London, whom he'd first met when he was 21 and she was 15.

Trivia: One of the most prolific actors in television history -- with starring roles in 11 different television series under his belt -- Harry Morgan is most closely identified with his portrayal of Colonel Sherman Potter on M*A*S*H (1975-83). But his credits go back to the 1930s, embracing theater and film as well as the small screen. Born Harry Bratsberg in Detroit, Michigan, in 1915, he made his Broadway debut with the Group Theatre in 1937 as Pepper White in the original production of Golden Boy, alongside Luther Adler, Phoebe Brand, Howard Da Silva, Lee J. Cobb, Morris Carnovsky, Frances Farmer, Elia Kazan, John Garfield, Martin Ritt, and Roman Bohnen. His subsequence stage appearances between 1939 and 1941 comprised a string of failures -- most notably Clifford Odets' Night Music, directed by Harold Clurman; and Robert Ardrey's Thunder Rock, directed by Elia Kazan -- before he turned to film work. Changing his name to Henry Morgan, he appeared in small roles in The Shores of Tripoli, The Loves of Edgar Allen Poe, and Orchestra Wives, all from 1942. Over the next two years, he essayed supporting roles in everything from war movies to Westerns, where he showed an ability to dominate the screen with his voice and his eyes. Speaking softly, Morgan could quietly command a scene, even working alongside Henry Fonda in the most important of those early pictures, The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). Over the years following World War II, Morgan played ever-larger roles marked by their deceptive intensity. And even when he couldn't use his voice in a role, such as that of the mute and sinister Bill Womack in The Big Clock (1948), he was still able to make his presence felt in every one of his scenes with his eyes and his body movements. He was in a lot of important pictures during this period, including major studio productions such as All My Sons (1948), Down to the Sea in Ships (1949), and Madame Bovary (1949). He also appeared in independent films, most notably The Well (1951) and High Noon (1952). One of the more important of those roles was his portrayal of a professional killer in Appointment With Danger (1951), in which he worked alongside fellow actor Jack Webb for the first time. Morgan also passed through the stock company of director Anthony Mann, working in a brace of notable outdoor pictures across the 1950s. It was during the mid-1950s, as he began making regular appearances on television, that he was obliged to change his professional name to Harry Morgan (and, sometimes, Henry "Harry" Morgan), owing to confusion with another performer named Henry Morgan, who had already established himself on the small screen and done some movie acting as well. And it was at this time that Morgan, now billed as Harry Morgan, got his first successful television series, December Bride, which ran for five seasons and yielded a spin-off, Pete and Gladys. Morgan continued to appear in movies, increasingly in wry, comedic roles, most notably Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), but it was the small screen where his activity was concentrated throughout the 1960s.In 1966, Jack Webb, who had become an actor, director, and producer over the previous 15 years, decided to revive the series Dragnet and brought Morgan aboard to play the partner of Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday. As Officer Bill Gannon, Morgan provided a wonderful foil for the deadpan, no-nonsense Friday, emphasizing the natural flair for comic eccentricity that Morgan had shown across the previous 25 years. The series ran for four seasons, and Morgan reprised the role in the 1987 Dragnet feature film. He remained a busy actor going into the 1970s, when true stardom beckoned unexpectedly. In 1974, word got out that McLean Stevenson was planning on leaving the successful series M*A*S*H, and the producers were in the market for a replacement in the role of the military hospital's commanding officer. Morgan did a one-shot appearance as a comically deranged commanding general and earned the spot as Stevenson's replacement. Morgan worked periodically in the two decades following the series' cancellation in 1983, before retiring after 1999. He died in 2011 at age 96.

Trivia: Chanin Hale never really made it in movies, apart from a relative handful in the mid-'60s in which she played prominent supporting roles. But on television as a wholesome-yet-voluptuous blonde, she was a memorable guest star and supporting player for years on programs as diverse as Dragnet and The Red Skelton Show. She was born Marilyn Victoria Chanine Hale Harvey in Dayton, OH, and survived a desperately unhappy childhood in a broken home from where even her adopted younger sister was given up. (According to Hale in a 1969 interview, her sister returned to the orphanage when her parents separated). Hale took her mother's family name. She was a creative and very athletic girl, winning art awards and was very competitive in sports. She was bitten by the performing bug while still in school. After graduating from high school and working as a secretary, she decided to do something about pursuing acting. Some limited work in student and community theater helped, along with dancing and singing lessons, but she felt out of place and somehow "off balance" when it came to performing, until one day she dyed her red hair platinum blonde and suddenly recognized herself. She joined the Dayton Y Players and gained experience in everything from Greek tragedy to low comedy, and enjoyed a taste of success in the title role of Annie Get Your Gun. A move to New York in 1955, at age 18, put her in position to be discovered. During her first six years, she toured in the revue High Time, performed in The Gazebo (with William Bendix), Come Blow Your Horn, and Bus Stop in regional theater. She also worked as a cocktail waitress at the Gaslight Club (a pre-Playboy club institution for the well-heeled man about town), fending off advances from the patrons (and from her employers) when she worked as a stenographer. She also did Annie Get Your Gun on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and sang at Manhattan's #1 Fifth Avenue, eventually landinga role in Little Mary Sunshine, playing a flirtatious character named Twinkle. Hale also started doing television, playing secretaries, corpses, and everything in between. Her big break came from television in 1963 when she went to Los Angeles to appear in a comedy production at U.C.L.A. and was discovered by Jack Albertson, who offered her an introduction to Red Skelton. The veteran comic was always on the lookout for women with pantomime skills for his show, and after meeting Hale and seeing her work, immediately put her onto his weekly comedy variety show in the pantomime segment. She worked for him as a semi-regular for the next seven years. She also managed to appear in a handful of subsequent feature films, among them Gunn, Synanon, Will Penny, and The Night They Raided Minsky's, and in numerous dramatic television series. The most notable among them was the '60s revival of Dragnet on which she did three episodes -- in one, playing the seductive hostess for a crooked gambling ring, she came convincingly close to melting Jack Webb's by-the-book persona as Sgt. Joe Friday; watching the show today, Hale came off like the '60s answer to Gloria Grahame, and she may have had as good a career if only films were being made that included partly fallen-but-redeemable women in their casts of characters, but it was mostly Anne Francis and, on the much older side, Ava Gardner getting those parts. Hale's other television work includes appearances on Death Valley Days, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Hey Landlord, Hondo, The Donna Reed Show, The Danny Kaye Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Dating Game, and Girl Talk (the latter two as herself, out-of-character), as well as television productions of Brigadoon and Alice Through the Looking Glass. Hale was also a regular supporter of the USO and did tours of Vietnam and other overseas locations where American troops were stationed for more than a decade, well into the late '60s, working with John Welsh and John Malpezz on one tour. Indeed, she was one of the last fabulously successful pinups. In early 1969, a quarter century after the heyday of the pinup, when a picture of Hale in a homemade costume as "Eve" appeared in the New York Daily News, it generated so many requests from soldiers overseas that thousands of 8x10s had to be printed up and mailed. She continued working into the '70s on series such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Adam-12, and Marcus Welby, M.D.

Trivia: Before making his career switch to acting, G.D. Spradlin had been a prosperous Texas business tycoon and a highly respected history teacher. In films from 1968's Will Penny, the actor is perhaps best remembered for his work as on-the-take Senator Pat Geary in The Godfather, Part 2 (1974). His regal, assured bearing made him a natural for such forceful characterizations as LBJ in the 1990 TV movie Robert Kennedy and His Times. Spradlin has also played his share of high-ranking military officers, most memorably in Apocalypse Now (1979). A somewhat more avuncular G. D. Spradlin was seen in the role of Baptist minister (and erstwhile movie producer) Reverend Lemon in Ed Wood (1994).

Trivia: Not to be confused with the ex-member of the Lovin' Spoonful, New York-born actor John Sebastian specialized in tough guy roles for most of his career. He only appeared in two feature films, Paul Stanley's Cry Tough (1959) and Marc Lawrence's Nightmare in the Sun (1964) -- both gritty tales of underworld activity -- but he was a regular presence in any number of (usually) crime-related television dramas, most notably those produced by Jack Webb. Sebastian was a resident member of Webb's stock company of players, making nearly a dozen appearances on Dragnet and Adam 12, in addition to working on Mannix and Marcus Welby, M.D. -- and he even managed to appear in one episode of Get Smart ("Now You See Him, Now You Don't") as a KAOS agent. Built like a fire-plug with muscles, and vaguely resembling a young James Cagney and tough-guy actor Terry Becker, with a little bit of wry cynicism à la Brad Dexter thrown in, Sebastian sported a working-class New York accent that placed him in the streets, and usually pretty mean ones when he was in character. He was perfect for crime dramas, playing cops or, much more often, hoods. In the Dragnet episode "Police Commission -- DR-13," he was totally convincing as a grease monkey/strongarm man; and in the episode "The Squeeze," Sebastian was one of the most memorable thugs in the run of the show, calmly delivering the line, "In this business, it's not how tough you are, but how tough people think you are that matters," with the kind of easy, cool nonchalance that one might later more readily associate with the narration of Goodfellas. Sebastian retired from television acting at the age of 60, following an appearance in a 1975 episode of Adam 12. He died in 1993.

Trivia: Getting his career underway in such popular Broadway productions as A Streetcar Named Desire and A Man for All Seasons, veteran character actor Len Wayland was a longtime fixture of film and television, where he would appear in everything ranging from Gunsmoke to The A-Team.A native of Texas, Wayland moved to Hollywood in the early '50s, soon finding frequent work in television. Eventually gaining over 350 TV credits through his many appearances, Wayland played in such made-for-television thrillers as Michael Crichton's Pursuit (1972) before landing a regular role on Sam, a series created by Jack Webb (Wayland had previously made appearances in Webb's other television mainstay, Dragnet). Retiring from the business around 1980, Wayland, an avid golfer, spent much of his time putting around the green with close friends. Following a massive stroke, Len Wayland died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA, at the age of 80. True to form, those close to Wayland found it fitting to pay tribute to their friend with a memorial service at the place he loved most, on a golf course in Los Angeles.