Trivia: The younger brother of Gunsmoke star James Arness, American actor Peter Graves worked as a musician and radio actor before entering films with 1950's Rogue River. At first, it appeared that Graves would be the star of the family, since he was cast in leads while brother Jim languished in secondary roles. Then came Stalag 17 (1953), in which Graves was first-rate as a supposedly all-American POW who turned out to be a vicious Nazi spy. Trouble was, Graves played the part too well, and couldn't shake the Nazi stereotype in the eyes of most Hollywood producers. Suddenly the actor found himself in such secondary roles as Shelley Winters' doomed husband in Night of the Hunter (1955) (he was in and out of the picture after the first ten minutes), while sibling James Arness was riding high with Gunsmoke. Dissatisfied with his film career, Graves signed on in 1955 for a network kid's series about "a horse and the boy who loved him." Fury wasn't exactly Citizen Kane, but it ran five years and made Graves a wealthy man through rerun residuals--so much so that he claimed to be making more money from Fury than his brother did from Gunsmoke. In 1966, Peter Graves replaced Steven Hill as head honcho of the force on the weekly TV adventure series Mission: Impossible, a stint that lasted until 1973. Though a better than average actor, Graves gained something of a camp reputation for his stiff, straight-arrow film characters and was often cast in films that parodied his TV image. One of the best of these lampoonish appearances was in the Zucker-Abrahams comedy Airplane (1980), as a nutty airline pilot who asks outrageous questions to a young boy on the plane (a part the actor very nearly turned down, until he discovered that Leslie Nielsen was co-starring in the film). Peter Graves effortlessly maintained his reliable, authoritative movie persona into the '90s and 2000s, and hosted the Biography series on A&E, for which he won an Emmy; he also guest-starred on programs including Cold Case, House and American Dad. Graves died of natural causes in March 2010, at age 83.

Trivia: Fans of the original action /espionage series Mission Impossible (1966-70) may recognize black actor Greg Morris for playing electronics wizard Barney Collier. Morris spent most of his career on television, appearing on such shows as Ben Casey, The Dick Van Dyck Show and The Twilight Zone. During the 1970s, Morris was a regular on Vega$ (1978-81), playing police officer Lt. David Neslon. A native of Cleveland who spent part of his childhood in New York City, his mother worked as a secretary for black labor leader A. Phillip Reynolds. Before becoming a television actor during the early '60s, Morris attended Ohio State University and the University of Iowa. Morris passed away at the age of 61 on August 27, 1996. The cause of death was unreported.

Trivia: A Brooklynite from head to toe, Dane Clark never completely forsook his streetwise pugnacity, not even while attending Cornell and John Hopkins, and earning a law degree from St. John's University. Clark held down several Depression-era jobs--road gang worker, boxer, ballplayer, magazine model--before making his first stage appearance in 1938. Four years later, he made his entree into films, at first using his given name of Bernard Zanville (sometimes spelled Zaneville). Signed by Warner Bros. in 1943, Clark was given a new professional name and purpose in life: as potential replacement for Warners' resident "tenement tough" John Garfield. Since there was plenty of life left in the original Garfield, however, Clark was largely confined to secondary roles, usually as the hero's best friend or the cocky troublemaker from Brooklyn. As the 1940s drew to a close, Clark was afforded a few leading roles by Warners, though it was while on loan-out to Republic that he delivered his finest performance, as emotionally overwrought accidental murderer Danny Hawkins in Moonrise (1948). His film appearances were fewer and farther between in the 1950s, as he sought out more rewarding roles on television and the Broadway stage. He did get to play Harlem Globetrotters maven Abe Saperstein in the 1954 feature Go, Man, Go, but he also had to produce the film himself. On TV, Clark starred as news correspondent Dan Miller on the weekly adventure series Wire Service (1956), and played hotel owner Slate Shannon on the 1959 TV version of the old Bogart-Bacall radio series Bold Venture. He also co-starred as Lt. Tragg on the ill-advised New Perry Mason (1973), and made innumerable guest appearances on such series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, The Untouchables and Ellery Queen (1975 version).

Trivia: A classically-trained lead actor, Robert Reed appeared onscreen from 1958. His most famous role was as the father on the TV series The Brady Bunch.

Trivia: Saturnine character actor Martin Landau was a staff cartoonist for the New York Daily News before switching to acting. In 1955, his career got off to a promising beginning, when out of 2,000 applicants, only he and one other actor (Steve McQueen) were accepted by Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. Extremely busy in the days of live, Manhattan-based television, Landau made his cinematic mark with his second film appearance, playing James Mason's henchman in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). In 1966, Landau and his wife Barbara Bain were both cast on the TV adventure/espionage series Mission: Impossible. For three years, Landau portrayed Rollin Hand, a master of disguise with the acute ability to impersonate virtually every villain who came down the pike (banana-republic despots were a specialty). Unhappy with changes in production personnel and budget cuts, Landau and Bain left the series in 1969. Six years later, they costarred in Space: 1999 a popular syndicated sci-fi series; the performances of Landau, Bain, and third lead Barry Morse helped to gloss over the glaring gaps in continuity and logic which characterized the show's two-year run. The couple would subsequently act together several times (The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island (1981) was one of the less distinguished occasions) before their marriage dissolved.Working steadily in various projects throughout the next few decades, Landau enjoyed a career renaissance with two consecutive Oscar nominations, the first for Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), and the second for Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Landau finally won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's 1994 Ed Wood; his refusal to cut his acceptance speech short was one of the high points of the 1995 Oscar ceremony. He would continue to work over the next several years, appearing in movies like City of Ember and Mysteria, as well as on TV shows like Without a Trace and Entourage.

Trivia: A former University of Illinois sociology major, ash-blonde leading lady Barbara Bain studied for a theatrical career at New York's Actors Studio and Neighborhood Playhouse. While attending an actor's workshop in 1956, Barbara made the acquaintance of an intense young performer named Martin Landau. It was love at first sight, and they married in 1957. Landau and Bain strove to maintain separate careers, and while her husband tended to work more often than she did, Barbara was well-represented with guest appearances on such series as Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Get Smart and The Dick Van Dyke Show. In 1964, the Landaus worked together for the first time on an episode of The Greatest Show on Earth. They didn't care much for the experience, and vowed not to co-star again -- at least, not until producer Bruce Geller made them an offer they couldn't refuse with the weekly TV suspenser Mission: Impossible. Cast as silken espionage agent Cinammon Carter, Bain won three consecutive Emmies for her work on the series (if you're wondering why Cinammon never adopted elaborate disguises, as did practically everyone else on the program, it is because Bain suffered from claustrophobia, and could not abide being hemmed in by heavy makeup). Then, after three seasons' worth of Mission: Impossible, the Landaus quit the series in 1969, citing poor scripts and insufficient creative challenges. In later years, Bain would comment ruefully that leaving the show ruined her career. The record doesn't quite bear this out: indeed, during the early 1970s she racked up an impressive list of TV movie appearances, and was offered a great deal of money to reteam with Landau in the syndicated sci-fi TV series Space: 1999 (1975-77). In 1989, Bain appeared in her very first theatrical feature, Trust Me (1989), playing a truculent, dishonest art collector. Though long-divorced from Martin Landau, Barbara Bain did not express an aversion to the possibility of playing a cameo alongside her ex-husband in the 1996 film version of Mission: Impossible, should either one of them be asked to do so (alas, they weren't).

Trivia: The son of character actor Carleton G. Young, Tony Young was born in New York and raised in Hollywood. A handsome, athletic teenager, Young was offered a few film roles in the early '50s, but his father insisted that he get an education before launching a career. After stints with the Air Force and Los Angeles City College, the 6'3," 195-pound Young found showbiz work of sorts as an NBC page. Making all the right connections, he began landing TV roles in 1959. Two years later, he starred as U.S. Cavalry undercover agent Cord in the weekly TV Western Gunslinger. Tony Young remained typecast in Westerns ever afterward, essaying fast-draw roles in such films as Taggart (1963) and Charro (1969). The Tony Young listed in the credits of 1985's A Chorus Line is a different performer.

Trivia: Towering (5'11") redheaded actress Barbara Rhoades was 20 years old when she signed her first studio contract with Universal. She was possessed of a self-sufficiency and breezy sense of humor that belied her youth. The best of her early screen roles was gun-toting lady bandit Penelope Cushings in the 1968 Don Knotts vehicle Shakiest Gun in the West (a remake of The Paleface [1948] wherein Rhoades' role was played by Jane Russell). Beginning with 1977's Busting Loose, she was a regular on several TV sitcoms. For reasons best known to casting directors, Barbara Rhoades almost always ended up playing someone named Maggie: Maggie Gallegher in Hangin' In (1979), Maggie Chandler in Soap (1980-1981), Maggie Davis in You Again? (1986).

Trivia: Black supporting actor, onscreen from 1972.

Trivia: Chuck Hicks was both a character actor and a stunt man who worked in feature films, television and television commercials. He later became a stunt coordinator and an instructor.