Trivia: Brooklyn-born actor John Joseph Patrick Ryan borrowed his stage name "Jack Lord" from a distant relative. Spending his immediate post-college years as a seafaring man, Lord worked as an engineer in Persia before returning to American shores to manage a Greenwich Village art school and paint original work; he flourished within that sphere (often signing his paintings "John J. Ryan,") and in fact exhibited the tableaux at an array of prestigious institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Modern Museum of Art. Lord switched to acting in the late 1940s, studying under Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. In films and television from 1949, Lord (a performer with stark features including deep-set eyes and high cheekbones) played his share of brutish villains and working stiffs before gaining TV fame as star of the critically acclaimed but low-rated rodeo series Stoney Burke (1962). At around the same time, Lord played CIA agent Felix Leiter in the first James Bond film, Dr. No. From 1968 through 1980, Lord starred on the weekly cop drama Hawaii Five-O; producers cast him as Steve McGarrett, a troubleshooter with the Hawaii State Police who spent his days cruising around the islands, cracking open individual cases, and taking on the movers and shakers in Hawaiian organized crime, particularly gangster Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh), who eluded capture until the program's final month on the air. Lord also wrote and directed several episodes. After Hawaii 5-0 folded, Jack Lord attempted another Hawaii-based TV series, but M Station: Hawaii (1980) never got any farther than a pilot film. Lord died of congestive heart failure in his Honolulu beachfront home at the age of 77, in January 1998. He was married to Marie Denarde for 50 years.

Trivia: Handsome leading man Ray Danton trained for an acting career at Carnegie Tech. In films from 1952, Danton made an excellent impression as a hot-tempered Native American in Chief Crazy Horse (1954), but would not star in a film until Outside the Law (1956). Projecting an image of dangerous unpredictability, he was effectively cast in such roles as sex maniac Stan Hess in The Beat Generation (1959). During Hollywood's gangster cycle of the early '60s, Danton played the title roles in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960) and The George Raft Story (1960). As time went by, he began buoying his villainous characterizations with a wry sense of humor: Explaining his treachery to girlfriend Judi West in the 1965 Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV episode "The Discotheque Affair," Danton smoothly comments, "Darling, I forgot to tell you...I'm a cad." A more pleasant (but no less roguish) Danton was seen as one of the leads of the weekly Warner Bros. TVer The Alaskans (1959-1960). Unhappy at being typecast, Danton turned to directing in 1972 with the theatrical feature The Deathmaster. He later directed episodes of such TV weeklies as Cagney and Lacey, Fame, Quincy, and Dallas, and served a supervising producer of The New Mike Hammer (1984-1987). Ray Danton was married to Julie Adams, with whom he co-starred in Tarawa Beachhead (1958).

Trivia: Best known as a radio and television personality and host of several popular Weekly Top 40 radio programs, Casey Kasem (born Kemal Kasem, he was of Lebanese descent) occasionally appeared in feature films as a supporting actor. In addition, he was also a well-known voice actor whose most famous cartoon characterization was that of Shaggy from the Scooby Doo series. Kasem died at age 82 in June 2014.