Trivia: Rugged, handsome, stalwart, taciturn leading man George Montgomery (born George Montgomery Letz) began appearing under his given name in low-budget films as an extra, stuntman, and bit player in 1935. He changed his name in 1940 when he began getting lead roles, going on to a busy screen career primarily in westerns and action films. For a time Montgomery was very popular, receiving much publicity for his offscreen romances with such stars as Ginger Rogers, Hedy Lamarr, and Dinah Shore; he and Shore were married from 1943-62. Service in World War II interrupted his career, and after the war he was assigned mostly to minor productions. He starred in the late '50s TV series Cimarron City. In the early '60s Montgomery directed, produced, and wrote several low-budget action films shot in the Philippines. He was rarely onscreen after 1970.

Trivia: When bandleader Ina Ray Hutton launched her TV series in 1956, much was made of the fact that the entire on-camera cast was female -- right down to the announcer, a lovely newcomer named Diane Brewster. Signed to a Warner Bros. contract shortly after the inauguration of the Hutton show, Brewster appeared in several decorative film roles, the best of which was Kate Lawrence in The Young Philadelphians (1959). She also showed up sporadically as bewitched confidence trickster Samantha Crawford on the Warner Bros. TV series Maverick (1957-1962), and later starred as Wilhelmina "Steamboat Willie" Vanderveer in the weekly Warners actioner The Islanders (1960). Devotees of Leave It to Beaver will remember Brewster as Beaver's teacher Miss Canfield during the series' inaugural 1957-1958 season (she'd played an entirely different role in the 1956 Beaver pilot episode, "It's a Small World"). Thirty-five years later, the still-gorgeous Diane Brewster reprised her Miss Canfield characterization in the 1983 TV-movie Still the Beaver.

Trivia: Intending to become a dentist like his father, American actor Edgar Buchanan wound up with grades so bad in college that he was compelled to take an "easy" course to improve his average. Buchanan chose a course in play interpretation, and after listening to a few recitations of Shakespeare he was stagestruck. After completing dental school, Buchanan plied his oral surgery skills in the summertime, devoting the fall, winter and spring months to acting in stock companies and at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He was given a screen test by Warner Bros. studios in 1940, received several bit roles, then worked himself up to supporting parts upon transferring to Columbia Pictures. Though still comparatively youthful, Buchanan specialized in grizzled old westerners, with a propensity towards villainy or at least larceny. The actor worked at every major studio (and not a few minor ones) over the next few years, still holding onto his dentist's license just in case he needed something to fall back on. Though he preferred movie work to the hurried pace of TV filming, Buchanan was quite busy in television's first decade, costarring with William Boyd on the immensely popular Hopalong Cassidy series, then receiving a starring series of his own, Judge Roy Bean, in 1954. Buchanan became an international success in 1963 thanks to his regular role as the lovably lazy Uncle Joe Carson on the classic sitcom Petticoat Junction, which ran until 1970. After that, the actor experienced a considerably shorter run on the adventure series Cade's County, which starred Buchanan's close friend Glenn Ford. Buchanan's last movie role was in Benji (1974), which reunited him with the titular doggie star, who had first appeared as the family mutt on Petticoat Junction.

Trivia: In the 1959 Twilight Zone episode "Walking Distance," Gig Young comments that he thinks he's seen drugstore counterman Byron Foulger before. "I've got that kind of face" was the counterman's reply. Indeed, Foulger's mustachioed, bespectacled, tremble-chinned, moon-shaped countenance was one of the most familiar faces ever to grace the screen. A graduate of the University of Utah, Foulger developed a taste for performing in community theatre, making his Broadway debut in the '20s. Foulger then toured with Moroni Olsen's stock company, which led him to the famed Pasadena Playhouse as both actor and director. In films from 1936, Foulger usually played whining milksops, weak-willed sycophants, sanctimonious sales clerks, shifty political appointees, and the occasional unsuspected murderer. In real life, the seemingly timorous actor was not very easily cowed; according to his friend Victor Jory, Foulger once threatened to punch out Errol Flynn at a party because he thought that Flynn was flirting with his wife (Mrs. Foulger was Dorothy Adams, a prolific movie and stage character actress). Usually unbilled in "A" productions, Foulger could count on meatier roles in such "B" pictures as The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) and The Panther's Claw (1943). In the Bowery Boys' Up in Smoke (1957), Foulger is superb as a gleeful, twinkly-eyed Satan. In addition to his film work, Byron Foulger built up quite a gallery of portrayals on television; one of his final stints was the recurring role of engineer Wendell Gibbs on the popular sitcom Petticoat Junction.

Trivia: Had he been born a decade earlier, American actor Denver Pyle might well have joined the ranks of western-movie comedy sidekicks. Instead, Pyle, a Colorado farm boy, opted for studying law, working his way through school by playing drums in a dance band. Suddenly one day, Pyle became disenchanted with law and returned to his family farm, with nary an idea what he wanted to do with his life. Working in the oil fields of Oklahoma, he moved on to the shrimp boats of Galveston, Texas. A short stint as a page at NBC radio studios in 1940 didn't immediately lead to a showbiz career, as it has for so many others; instead, Pyle was inspired to perform by a mute oilfield coworker who was able to convey his thought with body language. Studying under such masters as Michael Chekhov and Maria Ouspenskaya, Pyle was able to achieve small movie and TV roles. He worked frequently on the western series of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry; not yet bearded and grizzled, Pyle was often seen as deputies, farmers and cattle rustlers. When his hair turned prematurely grey in his early '30s, Pyle graduated to banker, sheriff and judge roles in theatrical westerns -- though never of the comic variety. He also was a regular on two TV series, Code 3 (1956) and Tammy (1966). But his real breakthrough role didn't happen until 1967, when Pyle was cast as the taciturn sheriff in Bonnie and Clyde who is kidnapped and humilated by the robbers -- and then shows up at the end of the film to supervise the bloody machine-gun deaths of B&C. This virtually nonspeaking role won worldwide fame for Pyle, as well as verbal and physical assalts from the LA hippie community who regarded Bonnie and Clyde as folk heroes! From this point forward, Denver Pyle's billing, roles and salary were vastly improved -- and his screen image was softened and humanized by a full, bushy beard. Returning to TV, Pyle played the star's father on The Doris Day Show (1968-73); was Mad Jack, the costar/narrator of Life and Times of Grizzly Adams (1978-80); and best of all, spent six years (1979-85) as Uncle Jesse Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard. Looking stockier but otherwise unchanged, Denver Pyle was briefly seen in the 1994 hit Maverick, playing an elegantly dishonest cardshark who jauntily doffs his hat as he's dumped off of a riverboat. Pyle died of lung cancer at Burbank's Providence St. Joseph Medical Center at age 77.

Trivia: Six-foot-tall American actor Rory Mallinson launched his screen career at the end of WW II. Mallinson was signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1945, making his first appearance in Price of the Marines. In 1947, he began free-lancing at Republic, Columbia and other "B"-picture mills. One of his larger roles was Hodge in the 1952 Columbia serial Blackhawk. Rory Mallinson made his last film in 1963.

Trivia: American actor Emile G. Meyer had the squat, sinister features that consigned him nearly exclusively to western villains. Still, he was a good enough actor to transcend the stereotype, and audiences often found themselves understanding if not approving of his perfidy. The Meyer performance that most quickly comes to mind is in the movie Shane (1953), in which he played Ryker, the wealthy landowner who hires gunman Jack Palance to force the homesteaders off his turf. At first glance a two-dimensional baddie, Meyer delivers a heartfelt speech in which he bemoans the fact that pioneers like himself had to fight and die for their land, only to watch as outsiders rode in to stake claims on territory they hadn't truly earned. By the time Meyer is finished, half the audience is inclined towards his side, villain or no! In addition to his acting work, Emile G. Meyer also wrote TV and movie scripts. On that subject, Meyer was given to complaining in public as to how the old-boy network of Hollywood producers tended to freeze out any writer without a long list of screenplay credits -- and he complained as eloquently and persuasively as he had as Ryker in Shane (1953).