Trivia: Nightclub comedian and character actor, onscreen from 1943.

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: Olan Soule was so familiar as a character actor in movies and television during the 1950s and 1960s -- and right into the 1980s -- that audiences could be forgiven for not even reckoning with his 25-year career on radio. Soule was born in 1909 in La Harpe, Illinois, to a family that reportedly could trace its ancestry back to three passengers on the Mayflower. He began acting in tent shows in his teens, and made his first appearance on radio in 1926. With his rich, expressive voice -- which frequently seemed to belong to characters that audiences thought of as more physically imposing than the slightly built, 135-pound actor -- he quickly found himself in demand for a multitude of roles. Soule ultimately became closely associated with two series, spending more than a decade on the radio soap opera Bachelor's Children, and a nine-year run on The First Nighter, starting in the 1940s. He made the jump to television in 1949, but even in the visual medium his voice was initially part of his fortune -- one of his early movie assignments was as the narrator of the feature film Beyond The Forest (1949), starring Bette Davis. And many of those early on-screen assignments in features were uncredited, such as his appearance as Mr. Krull in Robert Wise's The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951). Still, Soule did attract attention, with his signature thin physique and the fact that he seemed to show up dozens of times a year, all over television and in movies. By the start of the 1960s, he'd amassed literally hundreds of screen appearances, making him one of the most recognizable character actors of the time period.One producer who took full advantage of Soule's skills early and often was Jack Webb, himself a radio veteran, who cast him in well over two dozen episodes of the original in 1950s Dragnet television series, principally in the recurring role of Ray Pinker. When Webb revived Dragnet in the second half of the 1960s, Soule was no less active, showing up at least a half dozen times each season, often in the role of police-lab scientist Ray Murray. Soule's studious, cerebral portrayal of Murray was reminiscent of the lab technician portrayed by Webb himself in He Walked By Night, the movie that led Webb to create Dragnet in the first place. In between those assignments, Soule appeared in dozens of features and was seen on the small screen in everything from Bonanza and Petticoat Junction to My Three Sons and the Herschel Bernardi series Arnie. Later in his career, Soule returned to his roots, lending his vocal talent to the animated series Super Friends.

Trivia: Alice Nunn was a character actress who enjoyed a 24-year career on-stage, in movies, and on television. Born in Jacksonville, FL, in 1927, she was bitten by the performing bug early in life; she was in school productions of such works as My Sister Eileen and attended the Wesleyan Conservatory and School of Fine Arts. Nunn later trained at the American Theater Wing and worked in radio as a continuity director before getting her break in New Faces of 1956. A singing comedienne who resembled a young Pert Kelton crossed with Sheila James, Nunn worked on-stage with Shelley Berman and Nancy Walker, and made her screen debut on television in episodes of Petticoat Junction. She later became a regular denizen of '60s sitcoms, playing comically strong-willed, often slightly belligerent women. Fans of 1960s sitcoms may remember her from Camp Runamuck as Mahala May Gruenecker, the head counselor of Camp Divine and the nemesis of series star Arch Johnson's Commander Wivenhoe; she was the perfect foil to Johnson's hulking macho boys camp leader, locking horns with him every week in much the same way that Margaret Rutherford had with Alastair Sim in the movie The Happiest Days of Your Life. Nunn's first feature film was Johnny Got His Gun (1971), in which she was one of the nurses. She was also a regular cast member of the Tony Orlando and Dawn variety show, but many of her film roles were bits, such as "Fat Lady" in Mame (1974) and "Passenger with Dog" in Airport 1975. She occasionally got bigger roles, such as the put-upon servant Helga in Mommie Dearest (1981), and is probably best remembered by 1980s filmgoers and Tim Burton fans for her portrayal of "Large Marge," the lady truck driver who frightens the hero in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985). If Nunn hadn't been so good at comedy, and exploiting the funny side of her imposing girth and presence, she might have been an older rival to Shirley Stoler, but it was not to be -- she died of heart failure in the summer of 1988, at age 60.