Trivia: Not to be confused with African-American action star Jim Brown or with the "Godfather of Soul" of the same name, American actor James Brown was a tennis pro before entering films in 1941. Clearly a man of unlimited athletic prowess, Brown appeared in such rugged Hollywood productions as The Forest Rangers (1942), Air Force (1943), Objective Burma (1945) and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). He had more sedate roles in Going My Way (1944), as nominal romantic lead Ted Haines (Bing Crosby, the star of the film, was a priest and therefore out of the running with the leading lady), and in Pride of St. Louis (1952), a biopic about baseball star Dizzy Dean wherein Brown played sidelines ballplayer "Moose." Few of his later movies were worth mentioning, though Brown had a few telling moments as the stern, rifle-toting father of the serial killer "protagonist" in Peter Bogdanovich's Targets (1968). Brown, sometimes billed as Jim L. Brown, is best known to aging baby boomers for his continuing role as Lt. Rip Masters on the enormously popular 1950s TV series Rin Tin Tin. He retired from acting in the late 1960s to manage his successful body-building equipment concern, then was appointed head of customer relations at Faberge, a cosmetics firm. When Faberge's filmmaking division, Brut Productions, put together a 1975 comedy titled Whiffs, the producers persuaded Brown to return to acting in a supporting role. And in 1976, James Brown redonned his 19th century cavalry uniform to film new wraparounds for a syndicated Rin Tin Tin rerun package.

Trivia: A professional magazine model at age four, American actress Anne Francis made some 3000 appearances on network radio before she was ten. She was under film contracts to both MGM and 20th Century-Fox as a teenager; in the days of publicity-agent pigeonholing, the actress was dubbed variously as "The Fragile Blonde with the Mona Lisa Smile" and "The Palomino Blonde," labels that she intensely despised. Usually cast in sullen bad-girl or troublemaker roles, Francis suffered from a volcanic private life; throughout these years her one source of comfort was her pet dog Smidgeon, whom she'd named after Walter Pidgeon, her co-star in the science-fiction film classic Forbidden Planet (1956). In 1965, Francis found herself with a more contentious pet, an ocelot named Bruce Biteabit, when she starred in the TV adventure series Honey West, in which she played a glamorous private detective. The series was meant to cash in on the gimmicky James Bond movies of the time (Honey West was a judo expert, had exploding earrings, and a microphone hidden in a martini olive), and like many such imitations, the program was on and off in a single year. Francis' film and TV career continued unabated after that, though a potentially good role in the 1968 movie musical Funny Girl was mostly consigned to the cutting-room floor in order to intensify the spotlight on the film's star, Barbra Streisand. Active in guest star spots into the early '90s, Anne Francis--billing herself in recent years as Anne-Lloyd Francis--enjoyed a brief co-starring turn as Mama Jo on the 1984 action series Riptide.

Trivia: German-born John Ericson trained for an acting career at New York's American Academy of the Dramatic Arts. Ericson possessed a brash, bristly personality and handsome, sensitive features. He appeared in a series of popular films including the outlaw drama Pretty Boy Floyd (1960) and the lyrical romances Teresa (1952) and Rhapsody (1953). In 1965, Ericson co-starred with Anne Francis on the TV private eye series Honey West.

Trivia: Chuck Hicks was both a character actor and a stunt man who worked in feature films, television and television commercials. He later became a stunt coordinator and an instructor.