Trivia: She may have hailed from Denver, but actress Debra Paget had the sensual, exotic demeanor of an Arabian Nights princess -- which indeed she played on a few occasions. Signed by 20th Century Fox in 1949, the fresh-out-of-high-school Paget made her cinematic mark in the role of James Stewart's ill-fated Native American wife in Broken Arrow (1950). Most of her subsequent roles were merely decorative, though she was a more than adequate Cosette in the 1952 version of Les Miserables. In 1959, Paget was cast in Fritz Lang's sumptuous international production Journey to the Lost City, gaining extensive publicity coverage for her blood pressure-raising belly dance. After two failed marriages, one to director Budd Boetticher (for whom she had acted in 1955's Seven Men From Now), Debra Paget wed a wealthy Chinese-American oil executive in 1964, the same year that she retired from films.

Trivia: Blonde, bouncy Dorothy Provine was born in South Dakota to a Seattle-based businessman and his interior decorator wife. While attending the University of Washington, Provine appeared in some 35 amateur and professional stage productions, and was cohost of a Seattle TV quiz program. She headed to Broadway at age 20, but had better luck in Hollywood, where she was given star billing in such low-budgeters as The Bonnie Parker Story (1958) and The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959), the latter film representing Lou Costello's last screen work. Signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1959, Provine starred on two hour-long TV series, The Alaskans and The Roaring 20s. Both programs gave the actress ample opportunity to display her considerable singing and dancing skills, as did her extended cameo in the 1965 Blake Edwards superproduction The Great Race. She also proved an apt comedienne in such films as It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), Good Neighbor Sam (1964), and Who's Minding the Mint? (1967); she was less effective as a British secret agent in Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (1966). Dorothy Provine retired from the screen in 1968 upon marrying cinematographer-director Robert Day, though she continued to show up in commercials and "straw hat" summer theater productions. She died in late april 2010 of emphysema.

Trivia: Leading man Robert Lowery came to Hollywood on the strength of his talent as a band vocalist. He was signed to a movie contract in 1937 by 20th Century-Fox, a studio that seemed to take a wicked delight in shuttling its male contractees from bits to second leads to bits again. Freelancing from 1942 onward, Lowery starred in a few low-budget films at Universal and Monogram. In 1949, he portrayed the Caped Crusader in the Columbia serial Batman and Robin. On television, Robert Lowery co-starred as Big Tim Champion on the kiddie series Circus Boy (1956-1958), and played smooth-talking villain Buss Courtney on the Anne Sheridan sitcom Pistols and Petticoats (1967).

Trivia: After making his film debut in Naked City (1948), Raymond Greenleaf was nearly always cast as a judge, most memorably as conscience-stricken, suicide-prone Judge Stanton in the 1949 Oscar-winner All the King's Men. Usually a supporting player, he was afforded top billing as a dedicated county prosecutor in Republic's When Gangland Strikes (1956). Raymond Greenleaf once more donned judicial robes for his final screen appearance in Judgement at Nuremberg (1961).

Trivia: A graduate of St. Peter's College, Nick Adams made his screen-acting bow at age 20 with a bit in Somebody Loves Me (1952). Signed at Warner Bros. in 1955, Adams appeared with James Dean in Rebel without a Cause. An inveterate offscreen prankster, Adams enjoyed making Dean laugh by doing on-target impersonations of his co-stars; this talent came in handy when Adams was called upon to dub in several of James Dean's lines in Giant after Dean's fatal car accident. The best of Adams' 1950s movie assignments included the role of Andy Griffith's nerdish air force buddy in No Time for Sergeants (1957) and the would-be seducer of Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959). In 1959, Adams was cast as ex-Confederate soldier Johnny Yuma on the popular TV western The Rebel; less successful was his 1962 starring series Saints and Sinners. After an Oscar nomination for his performance as a surly murder suspect in Twilight of Honor (1963), Adams' career went into an eclipse. Nick Adams died in 1968, the result of an overdose of prescription drugs.

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: 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.