Trivia: The son of an Oklahoma carpet layer, James Garner did stints in the Army and merchant marines before working as a model. His professional acting career began with a non-speaking part in the Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (1954), in which he was also assigned to run lines with stars Lloyd Nolan, Henry Fonda, and John Hodiak. Given that talent roster, and the fact that the director was Charles Laughton, Garner managed to earn his salary and receive a crash course in acting at the same time. After a few television commercials, he was signed as a contract player by Warner Bros. in 1956. He barely had a part in his first film, The Girl He Left Behind (1956), though he was given special attention by director David Butler, who felt Garner had far more potential than the film's nominal star, Tab Hunter. Due in part to Butler's enthusiasm, Garner was cast in the Warner Bros. TV Western Maverick. The scriptwriters latched on to his gift for understated humor, and, before long, the show had as many laughs as shoot-outs. Garner was promoted to starring film roles during his Maverick run, but, by the third season, he chafed at his low salary and insisted on better treatment. The studio refused, so he walked out. Lawsuits and recriminations were exchanged, but the end result was that Garner was a free agent as of 1960. He did quite well as a freelance actor for several years, turning in commendable work in such films as Boys' Night Out (1962) and The Great Escape (1963), but was soon perceived by filmmakers as something of a less-expensive Rock Hudson, never more so than when he played Hudson-type parts opposite Doris Day in Move Over, Darling and The Thrill of It All! (both 1963).Garner fared rather better in variations of his Maverick persona in such Westerns as Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) and The Skin Game (1971), but he eventually tired of eating warmed-over stew; besides, being a cowboy star had made him a walking mass of injuries and broken bones. He tried to play a more peaceable Westerner in the TV series Nichols (1971), but when audiences failed to respond, his character was killed off and replaced by his more athletic twin brother (also Garner). The actor finally shed the Maverick cloak with his long-running TV series The Rockford Files (1974-1978), in which he played a John MacDonald-esque private eye who never seemed to meet anyone capable of telling the truth. Rockford resulted in even more injuries for the increasingly battered actor, and soon he was showing up on TV talk shows telling the world about the many physical activities which he could no longer perform. Rockford ended in a spirit of recrimination, when Garner, expecting a percentage of the profits, learned that "creative bookkeeping" had resulted in the series posting none. To the public, Garner was the rough-hewn but basically affable fellow they'd seen in his fictional roles and as Mariette Hartley's partner (not husband) in a series of Polaroid commercials. However, his later film and TV-movie roles had a dark edge to them, notably his likable but mercurial pharmacist in Murphy's Romance (1985), for which he received an Oscar nomination, and his multifaceted co-starring stints with James Woods in the TV movies Promise (1986) and My Name Is Bill W. (1989). In 1994, Garner came full circle in the profitable feature film Maverick (1994), in which the title role was played by Mel Gibson. With the exception of such lower-key efforts as the noir-ish Twilight (1998) and the made-for-TV thriller Dead Silence (1997), Garner's career in the '90s found the veteran actor once again tapping into his latent ability to provoke laughs in such efforts as Space Cowboys (2000) while maintaining a successful small-screen career by returning to the role of Jim Rockford in several made-for-TV movies. He provided a voice for the popular animatedfeature Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and appeared in the comedy-drama The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002). Garner enjoyed a career resurgance in 2003, when he joined the cast of TV's 8 Simple Rules, acting as a sort of replacement for John Ritter, who had passed away at the beginning of the show's second season. He next appeared in The Notebook (2004), which earned Garner a Screen Actors Guild nomination and also poised him to win the Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award. His last on-screen role was a small supporting role in The Ultimate Gift (2007). In 2008, Garner suffered a stroke and retired acting. He died in 2014, at age 86.

Trivia: Trained at Juilliard and the American Academy of Dramatic Art, actress Constance Towers made her first impression on the public as a film actress. Towers was seen as the resourceful Southern-belle leading lady of John Ford's The Horse Soldiers (1959), then essayed a similar characterization in Ford's Sergeant Rutledge (1960). For a brief period in the early 1960s, she was the pet actress of director Samuel Fuller, who effectively cast her in extremely demanding roles in Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1965). With several film and TV appearances to her credit, Towers finally made her professional stage debut in a 1960 production of Guys and Dolls; one year later, she made her Broadway bow as star of Anya, a musicalization of Anastasia. Most closely associated with musicals, she has made hundreds of appearances in revivals of such Rodgers and Hammerstein classics as South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. During the 1960s and 1970s, Constance hosted a daily discussion show on New York radio station WOR. On TV, Towers has been seen as Clarissa McCandliss, daughter of JR-type patriarch Rory Calhoun, on the daytime drama Capitol (1982-87), and as Camilla, the mother of ex-call girl Jade O'Keefe (Lisa Hartman), on the heavy-breathing nighttimer 2000 Malibu Road (1992). Constance Towers is married to former actor and U.S. diplomat John Gavin.

Trivia: A popular Broadway actor who was blacklisted following his refusal to answer questions at the HUAC hearings, actor and World War II veteran Alan Manson rebuilt his career following the McCarthy witch hunts, though he is best remembered for his stage roles in such Broadway hits as Funny Girl and Neil Simon's Broadway Bound. A Brooklyn, NY, native, Manson made his stage debut at 16 before hitting the bright lights of Broadway with his performance in Journey to Jerusalem at 21. Joining a touring wartime acting troupe during World War II, Manson and company attempted to keep morale high in such productions as Three Men and a Horse and Brother Rat. After being noticed by famed composer Irving Berlin, Manson made his film debut in the 1943 feature This Is the Army. Returning to the United States shortly following the end of the war, the now-established actor returned to the Broadway stage with roles in Call Me Mister and Rodgers & Hammerstein's Allegro. Summoned before the HUAC shortly before he was to take the lead in 1955's Blithe Spirit, the actor paid for his silence when he was blacklisted from television until the early '60s. Returning to the stage and screen in the early '70s following a few turbulent years, Manson would continue to make a name for himself with roles in made-for-television movies (Switch [1975] and Charles and Diana: Unhappily Ever After [1992]), theatrical feature films (Bang the Drum Slowly [1973], The Doors [1991]), and such notable television series as Three's Company, The Rockford Files, and Kojak. In March of 2002, Alan Manson died of natural causes in New York. He was 83.

Trivia: Stuart Margolin was a published writer and off-Broadway playwright before he was old enough to vote. The pinch-faced, curly-headed Margolin began showing up in character parts in 1966, in films like Women of a Prehistoric Planet and TV series like Occasional Wife. He was a staff writer and member of the acting ensemble on the popular sitcom anthology Love American Style, which ran from 1969 through 1974. In 1971, Margolin co-starred on the western series Nichols, launching his long friendship and professional association with actor James Garner. He went on to win two Emmy awards for his portrayal of mildly larcenous Angel Martin on Garner's long-running (1974-80) series The Rockford Files; played Philo Sandine on the 1981 retro Garner TV vehicle Bret Maverick; and guest-starred on the first episode of Garner's short-lived "dramedy" Man of the People (1991). Stuart Margolin turned to directing in the 1980s, beginning with (inevitably) a brace of James Garner TV movies, The Long Summer of George Adams (1982) and The Glitter Dome (1984)); he has since helmed two theatrical features, Paramedics and Donna d'Onore (both 1990).

Trivia: When asked why he decided upon becoming an actor, Joe Santos tended to trot out the tried-and-true rationale "because I failed at everything else." While attending Fordham University, Santos excelled at football, but lost interest in the sport after a few semi-pro years. By the time he was 30, Santos had been remarkably unsuccessful in a variety of vocations, including railroad worker, tree cutter, automobile importer and tavern owner. While working a construction job in New York, Santos was invited by a friend to sit in on an acting class. This seemed like an easy way to make a living, so Santos began making the audition rounds, almost immediately landing a good part on a TV soap opera. This gig unfortunately led nowhere, and for the next year or so Santos drove a cab for 10 to 11 hours a day. The novice actor's first big break was a part in the 1971 film Panic in Needle Park, which he received at the recommendation of the film's star (and Santos' frequent softball partner) Al Pacino. With the plum part of Sergeant Cruz in the four-part TV drama The Blue Knight (1973), Santos inaugurated a fruitful, still-thriving career in "cop" roles, the best and longest-lasting of which was detective Dennis Becker on the James Garner series The Rockford Files (1974-80). Joe Santos' other series-TV credits include the top-billed part of deadbeat dad Norman Davis in Me and Maxx (1980), Hispanic nightclub comic Paul Rodriguez' disapproving father in AKA Pablo (1984), and Lieutenant Frank Harper in the 1985-86 episodes of Hardcastle and McCormick. One of his final roles was a recurring gig on The Sopranos. Santos died in 2016, at age 84.

Trivia: Born in New York City while his father Noah Beery Sr. was appearing on-stage, Noah Beery Jr. was given his lifelong nickname, "Pidge," by Josie Cohan, sister of George M. Cohan "I was born in the business," Pidge Beery observed some 63 years later. "I couldn't have gotten out of it if I wanted to." In 1920, the younger Beery made his first screen appearance in Douglas Fairbanks' The Mark of Zorro (1920), which co-starred dad Noah as Sergeant Garcia. Thanks to a zoning mistake, Pidge attended the Hollywood School for Girls (his fellow "girls" included Doug Fairbanks Jr. and Jesse Lasky Jr.), then relocated with his family to a ranch in the San Fernando Valley, miles from Tinseltown. While some kids might have chafed at such isolation, Pidge loved the wide open spaces, and upon attaining manhood emulated his father by living as far away from Hollywood as possible. After attending military school, Pidge pursued film acting in earnest, appearing mostly in serials and Westerns, sometimes as the hero, but usually as the hero's bucolic sidekick. His more notable screen credits of the 1930s and '40s include Of Mice and Men (1939), Only Angels Have Wings (again 1939, this time as the obligatory doomed-from-the-start airplane pilot), Sergeant York (1941), We've Never Been Licked (1943), and Red River (1948). He also starred in a group of rustic 45-minute comedies produced by Hal Roach in the early '40s, and was featured in several popular B-Western series; one of these starred Buck Jones, whose daughter Maxine became Pidge's first wife. Perhaps out of a sense of self-preservation, Beery appeared with his camera-hogging uncle Wallace Beery only once, in 1940's 20 Mule Team. Children of the 1950s will remember Pidge as Joey the Clown on the weekly TV series Circus Boy (1956), while the more TV-addicted may recall Beery's obscure syndicated travelogue series, co-starring himself and his sons. The 1960s found Pidge featured in such A-list films as Inherit the Wind (1960) and as a regular on the series Riverboat and Hondo. He kicked off the 1970s in the role of Michael J. Pollard's dad (there was a resemblance) in Little Fauss and Big Halsey. Though Beery was first choice for the part of James Garner's father on the TV detective series The Rockford Files, Pidge was committed to the 1973 James Franciscus starrer Doc Elliot, so the Rockford producers went with actor Robert Donley in the pilot episode. By the time The Rockford Files was picked up on a weekly basis, Doc Elliot had tanked, thus Donley was dropped in favor of Beery, who stayed with the role until the series' cancellation in 1978. Pidge's weekly-TV manifest in the 1980s included Quest (1981) and The Yellow Rose (1983). After a brief illness, Noah Beery Jr. died at his Tehachapi, CA, ranch at the age of 81.

Trivia: Tough-guy American actor James Luisi could usually be found playing cops or plainclothes detectives. Luisi spent four (1976-80) years in the role of Lt. Doug Chapman on TV's The Rockford Files, later repeating the characterization (now promoted to Captain) in two Rockford TV-movies of the mid-1990s. On daytime TV, he was seen as Phil Wainwright in Another World. James Luisi's TV resumé also included the roles of garage owner Harry Foreman in Harris and Company (1979) and police lieutenant Marciano in Renegades (1983).

Trivia: Character actress, onscreen (after much stage experience) from 1968; usually in matronly roles.

Trivia: Joseph Pevney may not be the first name that one thinks of in terms of record-breaking movies, but the actor-turned-director -- who had a pretty considerable stage career before turning exclusively to the movies in the second half of the 1940s -- was responsible for some of the highest-grossing movies in the first four decades of Universal Pictures; and between and around them, he was one of the most reliable filmmakers in Hollywood, a touch he didn't lose when he jumped to television in the second half of the 1960s. He was a director with a widely recognized knack for making something substantial out of very little script, which proved a priceless gift on both the large and small screens. Joseph Pevney was born in Manhattan in 1911, the son of a watchmaker and amateur songwriter. He was a natural performer and made his debut at age 12, in 1924, as a boy soprano, in vaudeville. In those days, kid acts had a novelty value, but among the practitioners were a few genuine prodigies who had what it took to extend their career into adulthood -- Alfred Newman was one on the piano, and Joe Pevney was one as an actor. He hated vaudeville and intended to become a doctor, even becoming a pre-med student at New York University, but by then he couldn't escape the lure of the theater. He was soon devoting his energy to directing varsity dramatics and before graduation ever became an issue, he was an assistant stage manager and bit player on Broadway. His first professional appearance on stage as a serious actor was in Johnny Johnson, and he subsequently appeared in such major plays as The World We Make, Key Largo, Golden Boy, and Native Son. Pevney juggled his acting and directing work throughout the 1930s, and it was while directing in a summer theater in Iveryton, CT, in 1939 that he first met Mitzi Green, an actress who'd been working from an even earlier age and had lately made her Broadway debut. They were married in 1942 and had two children who they raised in a successful bi-coastal life, keeping a home in the San Fernando Valley and one in Flushing, Queens. Pevney's career was interrupted by World War II, which took him to Europe as a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He was also in the 1944 revival of Counselor at Law on Broadway starring Paul Muni, playing Harry Becker, the injured, wild-eyed communist agitator (played by Vincent Sherman in the movie). His last major stage appearance was in Home of the Brave, in which he played Coney. Pevney made his big-screen debut in 1946, in Edwin L. Marin's crime thriller Nocturne starring George Raft and Lynn Bari, and the following year played a major co-starring role with John Garfield and Lilli Palmer in Robert Rossen's Body and Soul (1947). He was in a couple of more very good movies, including Jules Dassin's Thieves' Highway (1949) and his own Outside the Wall (1950), before he gave up acting permanently in favor of directing. He was signed up at Universal and proved to be a dual-threat director, very good with actors -- obviously as a result of his years of experience on stage -- and yet was also well able to set up and bring off an action scene on budget and excitingly. Pevney worked with such future stars as Rock Hudson (whom he initially did not want) in the movie The Iron Man, Mamie van Doren, and Frank Sinatra when he was still trying to prove that he could be a serious actor, and did well with and by all of them. He was equally good at drama, comedy, thrillers, and costume epics, but he seemed to have special success -- in terms of the acting that resulted -- working with Tony Curtis (in Six Bridges to Cross) and Jeff Chandler. He and Chandler, with George Nader and Richard Boone in supporting roles, proved an unbeatable combination in Away All Boats, which became the highest grossing movie in the history of the studio up to that time. He followed that grim, intense war drama up barely a year later with a gentle, lyrical, romantic, and seductive Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), which was not only a huge hit but also yielded a string of sequels (none directed by Pevney). He was not a great stylist, but for reasons that even they themselves don't understand, the French film critics liked his movies anyway, and if American critics were less accommodating, the American public expressed their approval of his work by turning it into a string of hits. He moved into television during the 1960s and directed dozens of episodes of Bonanza and some of the most popular episodes from the first and second seasons of Star Trek, including "Arena," "Amok Time," "The Trouble With Tribbles," and "The Immunity Syndrome," before turning to directing made-for-television features. Pevney retired in the 1980s, but his best movies and television episodes have continued to find new life on cable television and DVD releases well into the 21st century. He died in 2008 at age 96.

Trivia: Peter Hobbs began his long career in the 1964 film Good Neighbor Sam. He has worked on both television and in feature films. He is typically cast as an authoritarian figure.