Trivia: Intending to become a dentist like his father, American actor Edgar Buchanan wound up with grades so bad in college that he was compelled to take an "easy" course to improve his average. Buchanan chose a course in play interpretation, and after listening to a few recitations of Shakespeare he was stagestruck. After completing dental school, Buchanan plied his oral surgery skills in the summertime, devoting the fall, winter and spring months to acting in stock companies and at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He was given a screen test by Warner Bros. studios in 1940, received several bit roles, then worked himself up to supporting parts upon transferring to Columbia Pictures. Though still comparatively youthful, Buchanan specialized in grizzled old westerners, with a propensity towards villainy or at least larceny. The actor worked at every major studio (and not a few minor ones) over the next few years, still holding onto his dentist's license just in case he needed something to fall back on. Though he preferred movie work to the hurried pace of TV filming, Buchanan was quite busy in television's first decade, costarring with William Boyd on the immensely popular Hopalong Cassidy series, then receiving a starring series of his own, Judge Roy Bean, in 1954. Buchanan became an international success in 1963 thanks to his regular role as the lovably lazy Uncle Joe Carson on the classic sitcom Petticoat Junction, which ran until 1970. After that, the actor experienced a considerably shorter run on the adventure series Cade's County, which starred Buchanan's close friend Glenn Ford. Buchanan's last movie role was in Benji (1974), which reunited him with the titular doggie star, who had first appeared as the family mutt on Petticoat Junction.

Trivia: Dark-haired actress Lori Saunders is probably best remembered for her six season (1966-1972) portrayal of Bobbie Jo Bradley on the long-running sitcom Petticoat Junction. But she did appear in feature films, as well, including adventure and horror pictures, usually working under the name Linda Saunders, and even got to play the title-role in one such vehicle during the early/middle 1960s. Born Linda Marie Hines in Kansas City, Missouri in 1941, she began working as Linda Hines on television during the early 1960s, appearing in episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie And Harriet playing various characters. By the time she started showing up on episodes of Burke's Law and Bob Hope's TV specials, she was working as Linda Saunders, and it was under that name that she made her feature film debut in 1965, in The Girls On The Beach. Later that same year, Saunders played the title-role, a sort of distaff Tarzan, raised by wolves in the Alaskan wild, in Mara of the Wilderness, an adventure film that got a fairly wide theatrical release at the time, aimed primarily at younger audiences -- additionally, because it also starred Adam West, the movie was re-released following the premiere of the Batman television series in 1966, and was later shown on network television. By the time that movie had made its initial bow in theaters, however, Saunders had also appeared in a lead role in the Jack Hill/Stephanie Rothman-directed horror film Blood Bath (1966) (aka Track of the Vampire). In the year of that movie's release, however, Saunders redirected her work and career toward comedy, taking over the role of Bobbie Jo Bradley, the cerebral, studious middle daughter in the sitcom Petticoat Junction (and its sister series, Green Acres) from actress Pat Woodell. In contrast to Woodell, who had emphasized the character's braininess, Saunders' portrayal made the character a bit more boy-crazy and charmingly goofy -- one might think of a very young, slightly ditsy Phyllis Kirk -- and during the final season the writers gave her an on-going romantic interest in the guise of game warden Orrin Pike (Jonathan Daly). She also appeared in episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies and Love American Style and, following the cancellation of Petticoat Junction, worked in the comedy western series Dusty's Trail, as well as showing up in various feature films. Saunders retired from acting in the 1980s.

Trivia: The daughter of Sheila and Gordon MacRae, actress/singer Meredith MacRae was virtually born into a show business career, and with her voice and good looks it would have been difficult for her to have avoided such a choice, even if she'd wanted to. Her parents actually led a surprisingly unpretentious middle-class life-style, and she earned all of her breaks, whether they were roles in movies (Bikini Beach) or a chance at a recording career -- she cut a handful of records in the early/middle 1960s. But it was on the series My Three Sons in 1963 that she first became widely known on the small-screen, when she took the role of Sally Morrison. After two years in that part, she moved on to Petticoat Junction, where she took over the role of Billie Jo Bradley from Guinilla Hutton -- she kept the part for the five years remaining in the series' run, and the producers enabled MacRae to feature her singing ability in the part. Following the cancellation of the series, MacRae went on to do guest spots of series ranging from Fantasy Island to The Rackford Files, and she was also a frequence guest on game shows. She was also active in summer stock and regional theater productions of such shows as Bye Bye Birdie and Take Me Along, and raised money for various medical charities. MacRae died of complications from brain cancer in the summer of 2000.

Trivia: Balding, long-necked character actor Frank Cady was a stage actor of long standing when he moved into films in 1947. He was usually cast as a quiet, unassuming small town professional man, most memorably as the long-suffering husband of the grief-stricken alcoholic Mrs. Daigle (Eileen Heckart) in The Bad Seed (1957). A busy television actor, he spent much of the 1950s on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet as Ozzie Nelson's neighbor Doc Willard. The "TV Generation" of the 1960s knows Cady best as philosophical storekeeper Sam Drucker on the bucolic sitcoms Petticoat Junction (1963-1970) and Green Acres (1965-1971). Whenever he wanted to briefly escape series television and recharge his theatrical batteries, Frank Cady appeared with the repertory company at the prestigious Mark Taper's Forum.

Trivia: Peter Leeds played straight man to some of the most popular comedians of the mid- to late 20th century, including Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, Carole Burnett, and Johnny Carson. Leeds was also a fine dramatic actor. He spent most of his 40-plus-year career on television, appearing an astonishing 8,000 times on situation comedies and variety shows. Leeds has appeared on Broadway, in feature films, and on over 3,000 radio shows and was a popular voice-over artist. A native of Bayonne, NJ, Leeds received his training at the Neighborhood Playhouse. He made his film debut with a bit part in Public Enemies (1941). Leeds hooked up with Bob Hope in 1954 for a television special and continued working with Hope on specials and 14 U.S.O. tours through 1991. During the '70s, Leeds spent five years as the president of the Los Angeles chapter of AFTRA and later served on the actors' union's national and local Board of Directors. In 1992, AFTRA repaid his many years of service with its highest honor, the Gold Card. Leeds later served on the Board of Governors for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Leeds died of cancer on November 12, 1996, at age 79.

Trivia: Versatile American character actor Kay Kuter has worked steadily on stage, radio, screen and especially television. He is the son of distinguished art director Leo Kuter.

Trivia: Bespectacled American actor Walter Baldwin was already a venerable stage performer at the time he appeared in his first picture, 1940's Angels over Broadway. With a pinched Midwestern countenance that enabled him to portray taciturn farmers, obsequious grocery store clerks and the occasional sniveling coward, Baldwin was a familiar (if often unbilled) presence in Hollywood films for three decades. Possibly Baldwin's most recognizable role was as Mr. Parrish in Sam Goldwyn's multi-Oscar winning The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), for which the actor received thirteenth billing. He also had a prime opportunity to quiver and sweat as a delivery man whose truck is commandeered by homicidal prison escapee Robert Middleton in The Desperate Hours (1955). Seemingly ageless, Walter Baldwin made his last film appearance three years before his death in 1969's Hail Hero.

Trivia: Bald, lanky, laconic American actor Hank Worden made his screen debut in The Plainsman (1936), and began playing simpleminded rustics at least as early as the 1941 El Brendel two-reel comedy Love at First Fright. A member in good standing of director John Ford's unofficial stock company, Worden appeared in such Ford classics as Fort Apache (1948) and Wagonmaster (1950). The quintessential Worden-Ford collaboration was The Searchers (1955) wherein Worden portrayed the near-moronic Mose Harper, who spoke in primitive, epigrammatic half-sentences and who seemed gleefully obsessed with the notion of unexpected death. Never a "normal" actor by any means, Worden continued playing characters who spoke as if they'd been kicked by a horse in childhood into the '80s; his last appearance was a recurring role in the quirky David Lynch TV serial Twin Peaks. In real life, Hank Worden was far from addled and had a razor-sharp memory, as proven in his many appearances at Western fan conventions and in an interview program about living in the modern desert, filmed just before Worden's death for cable TV's Discovery Channel.