Trivia: Though best known for his Native American characterizations, Michael Ansara was actually of Lebanese descent. Ansara, born in Syria and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, entered Los Angeles City College in 1941, planning to become a doctor. His shyness in class prompted his professor to suggest that Ansara take a dramatics course to bolster his self-confidence. The medical profession's loss turned out to be the acting community's gain: after training at Pasadena Playhouse, Ansara blossomed as a classical actor with such groups as the Hollywood Players' Ring. The role that brought Ansara to the attention of Hollywood's higher-ups was his brief, uncredited appearance as the tormented Judas in The Robe (1953). He went on to be cast as Cochise in the 1956 TV series version of the 1950 20th Century-Fox feature Broken Arrow; while the role brought him fame and fortune, Ansara noted that "the acting range was rather limited. Cochise could do one of two things--stand with his arms folded, looking noble; or stand with his arms at his sides, looking noble." He was allowed a more flexible acting range, as well as a wider vocabulary, in his next Indian assignment, that of Harvard-educated federal marshal Sam Buckhart in the 1959 western series Law of the Plainsman. In later years, Ansara was active in the lucrative world of TV cartoon voiceover work. He was married for several years to actress Barbara Eden.

Trivia: Rough-edged character actor Morgan Woodward is the son of a Texas physician. Specializing in Westerns, the 6'3" Woodward has been seen in scores of big-screen oaters, and in 1956 held down the semi-regular role of Shotgun Gibbs in the TV series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. He has also made quite a few non-Western appearances on such video weeklies as Star Trek and The A-Team. In his spare time, Morgan Woodward is a licensed pilot.

Trivia: Born Henry Kleinbach, the name under which he appeared until 1936, Brandon was a tall man with black curly hair; he occasionally played the handsome lead but was more often typecast to play villains. As the latter, he appeared as white, Indian, German, and Asian men. Brandon's film career began with Babes in Toyland (1934) and went on to span fifty years. He played villains whom the audiences loved to hate in serials in the '30s and '40s, such as the Cobra in Jungle Jim, the mastermind criminal Blackstone in Secret Agent X-9, Captain Lasca in Buck Rogers Conquers the Universe (1939), and a sinister Oriental in Drums of Fu Manchu. Brandon played Indian chiefs no fewer than 26 times, notably in two John Ford westerns. He had occasional leading roles on New York stage, such as in a 1949 revival of Medea in which he played a virile Jason opposite Judith Anderson.

Trivia: Surely Technicolor was invented for the express purpose of showing to fullest advantage the flaming red hair of actress Rhonda Fleming. Born into a theatrical family, Fleming made her film bow while still attending high school. She was briefly under contract to producer David O. Selznick, for whom she played her first important film role, the nymphomaniac mental patient in Hitchcock's Spellbound (1946). While working at Paramount from 1947 through 1957, Fleming played opposite such diverse leading men as Bing Crosby (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court), Bob Hope (The Great Lover), Ronald Reagan (Hong Kong) and Donald O'Connor (The Buster Keaton Story). She fluctuated between good and bad girl roles throughout her Hollywood years, with most of her staunchest devotees preferring the "bad". Closing out her film career in 1969, Fleming briefly entered the business world before making comeback appearances in Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976) and The Nude Bomb (1980). The last two of Rhonda Fleming's five husbands were producer/director Hall Bartlett and theatre-chain executive Ted Mann.

Trivia: Redheaded leading man Robert Horton attended UCLA, served in the Coast Guard during World War II, and acted in California-based stage productions before making his entree into films in 1951. Horton's television career started off on a high note in 1955, when he was cast in the weekly-TV version of King's Row as Drake McHugh (the role essayed by Ronald Reagan in the 1942 film version). The series barely lasted three months, but better things were on the horizon: in 1957, Horton was hired to play frontier scout Flint McCullough in Wagon Train, which became the highest-rated western on TV. Horton remained with Wagon Train until 1962. He then did some more stage work before embarking on his third series, 1965's The Man Called Shenandoah. When this one-season wonder ran its course, Horton toured the dinner-theatre circuit, then in 1982 accepted a major role on the popular daytime soap opera As the World Turns. Horton continued acting until the late 1980s. He died in 2016, at age 91.

Trivia: American actor Ward Bond was a football player at the University of Southern California when, together with teammate and lifelong chum John Wayne, he was hired for extra work in the silent film Salute (1928), directed by John Ford. Both Bond and Wayne continued in films, but it was Wayne who ascended to stardom, while Bond would have to be content with bit roles and character parts throughout the 1930s. Mostly playing traffic cops, bus drivers and western heavies, Bond began getting better breaks after a showy role as the murderous Cass in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Ford cast Bond in important roles all through the 1940s, usually contriving to include at least one scene per picture in which the camera would favor Bond's rather sizable posterior; it was an "inside" joke which delighted everyone on the set but Bond. A starring role in Ford's Wagonmaster (1950) led, somewhat indirectly, to Bond's most lasting professional achievement: His continuing part as trailmaster Seth Adams on the extremely popular NBC TV western, Wagon Train. No longer supporting anyone, Bond exerted considerable creative control over the series from its 1957 debut onward, even seeing to it that his old mentor John Ford would direct one episode in which John Wayne had a bit role, billed under his real name, Marion Michael Morrison. Finally achieving the wide popularity that had eluded him during his screen career, Bond stayed with Wagon Train for three years, during which time he became as famous for his offscreen clashes with his supporting cast and his ultra-conservative politics as he was for his acting. Wagon Train was still NBC's Number One series when, in November of 1960, Bond unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and died while taking a shower.

Trivia: Robert Fuller spent his first decade in show business trying his best to avoid performing. After his film debut in 1952's Above and Beyond, Fuller studied acting with Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse but never exhibited any real dedication. He tried to become a dancer but gave that up as well, determining that dancing was "sissified." Fuller rose to nominal stardom fairly rapidly in the role of Jess Harper on the popular TV western Laramie (1959-63). Once he found his niche in cowboy attire, he stuck at it in another series, Wagon Train, turning down virtually all offers for "contemporary" roles. When westerns began dying out on television in the late 1960s, Fuller worked as a voiceover actor in commercials, earning some $65,000 per year (a tidy sum in 1969). On the strength of his performance in the Burt Topper-directed motorcycle flick The Hard Ride, Fuller was cast by producer Jack Webb as chief paramedic Kelly Brackett on the weekly TVer Emergency, which ran from 1972 through 1977. In 1994, Robert Fuller was one of several former TV western stars who showed up in cameo roles in the Mel Gibson movie vehicle Maverick.