Trivia: Rough-hewn American leading man Richard Boone was thrust into the cold cruel world when he was expelled from Stanford University, for a minor infraction. He worked as a oil-field laborer, boxer, painter and free-lance writer before settling upon acting as a profession. After serving in World War II, Boone used his GI Bill to finance his theatrical training at the Actors' Studio, making his belated Broadway debut at age 31, playing Jason in Judith Anderson's production of Medea. Signed to a 20th Century-Fox contract in 1951, Boone was given good billing in his first feature, Halls of Montezuma; among his Fox assignments was the brief but telling role of Pontius Pilate in The Robe (1953). Boone launched the TV-star phase of his career in the weekly semi-anthology Medic, playing Dr. Konrad Steiner. From 1957 through 1963, Boone portrayed Paladin, erudite western soldier of fortune, on the popular western series Have Gun, Will Travel. He directed several episodes of this series. Boone tackled a daring TV assignment in 1963, when in collaboration with playwright Clifford Odets, he appeared in the TV anthology series The Richard Boone Show. Unique among filmed dramatic programs, Boone's series featured a cast of eleven regulars (including Harry Morgan, Robert Blake, Jeanette Nolan, Bethel Leslie and Boone himself), who appeared in repertory, essaying different parts of varying sizes each week. The Richard Boone Show failed to catch on, and Boone went back to films. In 1972 he starred in another western series, this one produced by his old friend Jack Webb: Hec Ramsey, the saga of an old-fashioned sheriff coping with an increasingly industrialized West. In the last year of his life, Boone was appointed Florida's cultural ambassador. Richard Boone died at age 65 of throat cancer.

Trivia: American actor Robert Emhardt began his Broadway career in the late '30s as an understudy for corpulent character star Sidney Greenstreet whom he closely resembled. In films from 1952, the paunchy, phlegmatic Emhardt carved a niche in characterizations calling for gross, obnoxious villainy. His best and most typical screen role was the "respectable" crime boss in Sam Fuller's Underworld U.S.A. (1961). A television fixture well into the 1980s, Robert Emhardt showed up in several Alfred Hitchcock Presents installments, was seen on a regular basis as Mackenzie Cory on the daytime soap opera Another World, and won an Emmy for his wonderful performance as an ulcerated businessman stranded in Mayberry, NC, in "Man in a Hurry," a 1963 episode of The Andy Griffith Show.

Trivia: Active in Australian radio and stage productions from childhood, Sydney native Michael Pate made his first film in 1949 on his home turf. Pate then moved to Hollywood, where he settled into villainous or obstreperous roles. He is best remembered for his portrayal of Indian chief Vittoro in John Wayne's Hondo (1953), a part he recreated for the 1966 weekly TV adaptation of Hondo, which top-billed Ralph Taeger. Other career highlights include the 1954 TV adaptation of Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Casino Royale, wherein Pate became the first actor to play CIA agent Felix Leiter (though both the character's name and nationality were changed), and PT 109 (1963), in which Pate played the Australian mariner who harangued future President John F. Kennedy (Cliff Robertson).During his Hollywood stay, Pate occasionally dabbled in screenwriting, collaborating on the scripts of Escape from Fort Bravo (1953) and The Most Dangerous Man Alive (1961). In 1968 he returned to Australia where, with such rare exceptions as the weekly TVer Matlock Police, he curtailed his performing activities to concentrate on producing, writing and directing. He produced the 1969 feature film Age of Consent, and later was put in charge of production of Amalgamated Television in Sydney. He made his feature-film directorial debut with the TV movie Tim (1979), which boasted an impressive early starring performance by Mel Gibson. He also adapted the screenplay of Tim from the novel by Colleen McCullough, earning the Australian equivalent of the Emmy Award for his efforts. Michael Pate is the author of two instructional books, The Film Actor and The Director's Eye.

Trivia: Over his 14-year film career, actor Russ Bender appeared almost exclusively in low-budget horror films: The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), It Conquered the World (1957), Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1965), etc. One of his few "mainstream" assignments was the role of Edgar Llewellyn in 20th Century-Fox's Compulsion (1959). Russ Bender is also listed as screenwriter on such pinchpenny projects as Voodoo Woman.