Trivia: American actor John Hudson put in time as a stage performer before heading for Hollywood in the late '40s. Leading roles were few and far between, but Hudson was prominent among the supporting ranks in such films as Bright Victory (1951) (as corporal John Flagg) and Gunfight at the OK Corral (1956) (as Virgil Earp). When he did enjoy a role of significant size, it was usually in a film along the lines of The Screaming Skull (1958), which one could see on "Double Shock Theatre" or purchase on 8-millimeter film in the '60s. Because he worked efficiently and inexpensively, John Hudson was frequently employed by Jack Webb on the various Webb-produced TV series of the '60s and '70s.

Trivia: Many of those viewers who admire her will tell you that Peggy Webber is almost too good an actress for her own good, at least in terms of getting recognition for herself. A chameleon-like presence on-screen, Webber melts into her roles so well that she can often be overlooked by less perceptive viewers, in terms of her range and depth. Webber was the daughter of a wildcat oil driller, born in Laredo, TX, and began her career at age two and a half, performing during intermissions in silent movie theaters in the second half of the 1920s. She broke into radio in 1936, at age 11, and became one of the busier actresses in the medium. It was partly because of her work in radio that Orson Welles chose Webber for the role of Lady McDuff in his film of Macbeth (1948). Film credits were rare and unusual for her, however, so busy was she in the new medium of television, where she became a writer and producer early on and won one of the earlier awards ever given in the small-screen medium, in 1947, for her anthology series Treasures of Literature. Jack Webb used her on the Dragnet radio show and she made the transition to television with him, remaining as part of his stock company right through the late-'60s incarnation of the series. Two of her finest performances were in the episodes "Homicide -- The Student" and "The Joyriders," in which she played a teacher and a harried mother. Webber was still doing voice work in the early twenty first century. She was married for many years to actor Sean McClory, who was just as busy a character actor on television and in movies as she was on radio and television. Her biggest movie role was in Jack Arnold's anti-war science fiction drama The Space Children (1958), as the mother of two children who have come into contact with an alien intelligence.

Trivia: On stage from the age of 19, American actor Alex Nicol toiled away in supporting roles for nearly a decade, his Actors Studio training often serving him well in helping him make something out of nothing. Nicol enjoyed a good run in the 1949 Broadway smash South Pacific, albeit in a role consisting of no more than four lines. Things perked up when he made his first film, The Sleeping City, in 1950, after which Nicol concentrated upon movie parts calling for shifty villainy. He worked in both Hollywood and England, with time out for TV assignments, including an oddly delineated role as a grown-up Mamma's boy on the 1962 Twilight Zone episode "Young Man's Fancy." Nicol had accrued enough capital in the late '50s to begin directing as well as starring in films. Some of his projects were tawdry little items like The Screaming Skull (1958), but at least one Nicol-directed film, And Then There Were Three (1962), proved that a singular talent had been wasted in Hollywood. And Then There Were Three, a no-budget war film, scored on its grittiness and spontaneity; unfortunately the film was not given a general release, and began circulating only when sold to television in 1965. Alex Nicol added to his directing credits by helming a few network TV series in the '60s, often through the auspices of Universal, his home studio as an actor in the '50s.

Trivia: American actor Russ Conway was most at home in the raincoat of a detective or the uniform of a military officer. Making his movie bow in 1948, Conway worked in TV and films throughout the '50s and '60s. Some of his films include Larceny (1948), My Six Convicts (1952), Love Me Tender (1956) (as Ed Galt, in support of Elvis Presley) Fort Dobbs (1958) and Our Man Flint (1966). TV series featuring Conway in guest spots included The Beverly Hillbillies, The Munsters and Petticoat Junction. Russ Conway settled down in 1959 to play Lieutenant Pete Kyle on David Janssen's private eye TV weekly Richard Diamond.

Trivia: William Hudson was a character actor and sometime leading man on television and in movies. Born William Woodson Hudson, Jr. in Gilroy, California in 1925, he was the younger brother of future actor John Hudson, though he actually seemes to have entered movies first, during the mid-1940's, appearing in uncredited roles while in his teens, in such distinguished productions as Destination Tokyo (1943) and Objective, Burma! (1945), as well as lesser movies such as Weird Woman (1944). His late 1940's appearances included work in Allan Dwan's Sands Of Iwo Jima and R. G. Springsteen's early Red Scare drama The Red Menace (both 1949). Hudson didn't get a credited screen appearance until 1951, in Ida Lupino's drama Hard, Fast And Beautiful, in which he played an intern. He started doing television around this time, including supporting roles in series such as Racket Squad and Dragnet, but it was his role in the series I Led Three Lives, as FBI agent Mike Andrews, that gave him his first taste of stardom. He also played the recurring role of Ranger Clark on Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, which seemed to herald a move toward science fiction focused roles in his broader career. Most of his subsequent work was confined to television and lower-budgeted movies, usually as well-intended if sometimes weak or less-than-resourceful figures. His major film performances included the B-science fiction staples The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), The Man Who Turned To Stone (1957), and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), the latter offering him a rare chance to do something different, in terms of playing a villain. In between pictures like that, and an important supporting role in one installment of Man Into Space, he played much smaller parts in the major Universal releases Man Of A Thousand Faces and My Man Godfrey (both 1957). Hudson continued working into the 1970's, and his last performances included a small role in Ross Hunter's sprawling production of Airport (1970). Among the oddest work that Hudson -- or any other actor -- ever did, were his two performances in the series Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea. In the 1964 pilot episode, "Eleven Days To Zero", he was seen as the doomed first commander of the submarine Seaview, Capt. John Phillips, who is killed in an attempt on the life of Admiral Nelson (Richard Basehart); in "The X Factor", an episode from the following season, Hudson played the role of Captain Shire, who is killed off using the exact same footage depicting his character's death in the pilot episode. Thus, Hudson may well have had the odd distinction of being the only actor in television history to play two completely different characters on the same series killed off using the exact same filmed sequences. He died in 1974 of cirrhosis, at the age of 49.

Trivia: David McCallum's parents were both members of the London Philharmonic; his mother was a cellist and his father was first violinist. The young Scots-born McCallum himself planned to pursue a musical career after serving with the Royal West African Frontier Force, but decided instead upon acting. Following his studies at the RADA, McCallum entered films in 1957, where he was usually cast as a troublemaking street punk or callow junior officer. His first American film (albeit lensed principally in England) was Freud (1962), in which he played a profoundly mother-obsessed mental patient. McCallum became the rage of the teeny-bopper set when he was cast as cool-headed Russian secret agent Ilya Kuryakin on TV's The Man From UNCLE (1964-68). At one point, McCallum was receiving far more fan mail than the series' ostensible star, Robert Vaughn; he took advantage of his celebrity to launch a brief singing career, duetting with Nancy Sinatra on the 1966 UNCLE episode "The Take Me to Your Leader Affair." He also wrote the music and lyrics and sang the title song of his 1967 movie vehicle Three Bites of the Apple. Following UNCLE, McCallum had a handful of solid dramatic film roles before returning to the small screen in the short-lived 1975 series The Invisible Man. He continued to appear primarily in episodic television, although he occasionally could be glimpsed on the big-screen as well. Highlights include The Watcher in the Woods, Matlock, The Wind, Murder She Wrote, and The A-Team. The nineties began with a major part in the sleeper Hear My Song, before continuing in Healer, Law and Order, and Cherry. McCallum became a fixture on television yet again at the beginning of the 21st century when he was cast as Donald "Ducky" Mallard on CBS' drama NCIS, which was for a time the top-rated scripted drama on network television.A man of sundry outside interests, McCallum's range of expertise includes computers and small-arms weaponry. Once wed to actress Jill Ireland, David McCallum has since 1967 been married to Katherine Carpenter.