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 Shepperd Strudwick (born and occasionally credited as John Sheppard studied drama at the University of North Carolina, not far from his home town of Hillsboro. Strudwick was a member of the University's Carolina Playmakers, which boasted such alumni as Kay Kyser, Andy Griffith, George Grizzard and Sidney Blackmer. After a few years in outdoor drama productions and regional theatre, Strudwick headed for Broadway in the early '30s; the actor's more celebrated New York stage credits included the 1932 Pulitzer Prize winner Both Your Houses near the beginning of his career and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? near the end. In 1940, Strudwick was signed for films, but the producers of his first picture, Congo Maisie (1940), found the actor's name too stiff and formal for romnatic leading roles; thus, Shepperd Strudwick spent most of the '40s acting under the cognomen John Shepperd. Outside of the lead in 20th Century-Fox's The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe, John Shepperd/Shepperd Strudwick didn't exactly set the world ablaze as a movie star, so he went back to the stage, returning to Hollywood in the late '40s under his real name. Strudwick wasn't leading man material, but he was superb in roles calling for a blend of dignity and intensity. Arguably the best of his many film roles was as the guilt-ridden doctor and erstwhile assassin in the Oscar-winning All the King's Men (1949). In addition, Strudwick was a regular on two popular video soap operas, Love of Life and Another World. Shepperd Strudwick continued contributing first-rate characterizations to TV, movie and stage productions into the '70s; one of his last theatrical roles of note was as the ill-fated Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher in a dramatization of the "Pueblo" incident.

Trivia: Czechoslovakian actress Florence Marly played leading roles in the films of her own country, France, and even the occasional Hollywood film.