Trivia: American leading man Glenn Langan caught the eye of Hollywood after appearing opposite Luise Rainer in a 1942 Broadway revival of A Kiss for Cinderella. Signed by 20th Century-Fox, Langan was personally groomed for stardom by studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. Despite good roles in such Fox films as Margie (1946), Dragonwyck (1946), Forever Amber (1947) and The Snake Pit (1949), Langan never really became a public favorite. Free-lancing in minor films throughout the 1950s, Langan slipped into the realm of Pop Culture by virtue of his performance in the title role of the estimable The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). From 1949 onward, Glenn Langan was the husband of film actress Adele Jergens.

Trivia: A pretty, athletic leading lady with a refreshing down-to-earth quality, Cathy Downs worked as a model before signing a 20th Century-Fox contract in 1944. She was co-starred in several major Fox productions of the postwar years, and played the title role in John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946). Inexplicably, however, her career degenerated after 1947 into lower-berth programmers and cheap horror films like She-Creature (1956) and The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). Cathy Downs was married to actor/producer Joe Kirkwood, with whom she appeared in the Joe Palooka TV series of the early 1950s.

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: James Seay was groomed for romantic leads by Paramount Pictures beginning in 1940. After several nondescript minor roles, Seay finally earned a major part--not as a hero, but as a villainous gang boss in the Columbia "B" The Face Behind the Mask (1941). Never quite reaching the top ranks, Seay nonetheless remained on the film scene as a dependable general purpose actor, appearing in such small but attention-getting roles as Dr. Pierce, the retirement-home physician who explains the eccentricities of "Kris Kringle" (Edmund Gwenn) in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). In the 1950s, James Seay joined the ranks of horror and sci-fi movie "regulars;" he could be seen in films like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Killers from Space (1954), The Beginning of the End (1957), and--as the luckless military officer who is skewered by a gigantic hypodermic needle--The Amazing Colossal Man (1957).

Trivia: Larry Thor was a sometime movie and television actor who started his professional entertainment career doing voice work, as an announcer on radio. Born in 1916, he grew up in Lundar, Manitoba, Canada, in what was basically an Icelandic village. He broke into radio in 1937, working at various stations for a decade after, until he arrived in Los Angeles in 1946. His rich, resonant voice gave him a career as an announcer, with occasional bits of acting. In the early '50s, he crossed over into film work when he played a sports announcer in the 20th Century Fox baseball biopic The Pride of St. Louis, telling of the life of pitcher Dizzy Dean (Dan Dailey).Although he occasionally played announcers in subsequent movies, including The Kid From Left Field (1953) and Zero Hour! (1957), Thor also moved into straight acting roles, usually smaller or supporting parts where he could play authority figures -- he was in two key early productions of Roger Corman, Five Guns West and The Fast and the Furious. Once in a while, Thor also got to play a major role, such as that of Major Coulter, the military physician in Bert I. Gordon's The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), whose death scene is one of the highlights of the movie's low-budget thrills.Much of Thor's career from the mid-'50s onward, especially after the decline of radio, was spent on television, in every kind of series from M Squad to My Three Sons. He also made recordings, especially of children's records, and was still doing announcing work in documentaries and industrial films right into the 1970s. Typical of the odd arc of his career, a result of his specialized talent, in 1970, the same year in which he appeared in Fox's Tora! Tora! Tora!, he also was the voice of Kakafonous A. Dischord in The Phantom Tollbooth. He passed away in 1976.

Trivia: Over his 14-year film career, actor Russ Bender appeared almost exclusively in low-budget horror films: The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), It Conquered the World (1957), Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1965), etc. One of his few "mainstream" assignments was the role of Edgar Llewellyn in 20th Century-Fox's Compulsion (1959). Russ Bender is also listed as screenwriter on such pinchpenny projects as Voodoo Woman.

Trivia: Hank Patterson is best known to audiences for his portrayal of farmer Fred Ziffel on Green Acres -- for five seasons, his laconic character and the antics of his pig Arnold helped make life hopelessly confusing for series protagonist Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert). Patterson, along with his younger contemporary Arthur Hunnicutt, was one of a handful of character actors who cornered the market on portraying cantankerous old coots, usually in a rural setting, in movies and on television during the middle of the 20th century. With his deep, resonant voice, which could project even when he spoke in the softest tones, Patterson could also evoke menace and doom, an attribute that producers and directors sometimes utilized to great effect on programs like Twilight Zone. He was born Elmer Calvin Patterson in Springville, AL, in 1888, but by the 1890s his family had moved to Texas, and Patterson spent most of his boyhood in the town of Taylor. His main interest was music, and he studied in hope of a serious performing career, but was forced to enter showbusiness as a vaudeville pianist, playing with traveling shows. By the end of the 1920s, he'd made his way to California, and he entered the movie business as an actor -- despite his lack of formal training -- during the 1930s. Patterson's earliest identified screen work was an uncredited appearance in the Roy Rogers Western The Arizona Kid (1939). His first credited screen role was in the drama I Ring Doorbells, made at Producers Releasing Corporation. Patterson spent the next nine years working exclusively in Westerns, starting with Thomas Carr's The El Paso Kid, starring Sunset Carson. Among the best of the oaters that Patterson worked in were Edwin L. Marin's Abilene Town and Henry King's The Gunfighter, but most of the pictures that he did were on the low-budget side, and far less prestigious. He played a succession of blacksmiths, hotel clerks, farmers, shopkeepers, and other townsmen, usually bit roles and character parts. Beginning with Jack Arnold's Tarantula, Patterson moved into occasional modern character portrayals as well. Patterson also appeared on dozens of television series, ranging from The Abbott & Costello Show (where he played a very creepy mugger in "Lou Falls for Ruby") to Perry Mason. He was nearly as ubiquitous a figure on Twilight Zone as he was in any Western series, appearing in at least three installments, most notably as an old man in a modern setting in "Kick the Can," and as an ominous general store proprietor in "Come Wander With Me." It was the 19th century and rural settings, however, that provided his bread and butter -- he had appeared in several episodes of Gunsmoke, and in 1963 became a continuing character on the series in the role of Hank Miller, the Dodge City stableman. That same year, Patterson took on the semi-regular role of farmer Fred Ziffel in the rural comedy Petticoat Junction; and in 1965, that role was expanded into the series Green Acres -- eventually, he even portrayed Fred Ziffel in episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies as well. The association of his character with the utterly surreal (and extremely popular) porcine character of Arnold the Pig (also known as Arnold Ziffel) ensured that Patterson was one of the most visible supporting players on the series. Ironically, by the time he was doing Green Acres, Patterson was almost completely deaf, but the producers loved his portrayal so much, that they worked around this by having the dialogue coach lying on the floor out-of-shot, tapping at his leg with a yardstick when it was his cue to speak a line. Patterson passed away in 1975 of bronchial pneumonia at the age of 86. He was the great-uncle of actress Tea Leoni.

Trivia: Throughout most of his career Scott Peters appeared in low-budget horror movies and actioners. Though primarily a supporting actor, Peters occasionally won leading roles in features like Attack of the Puppet People (1958) and The Girl Hunters (1963). In the mid-'70s, Peters played Detective Valencia in the television drama Get Christie Love (1974).

Trivia: From 1922 through 1934, Iowa-born performer Frank Jenks was a song and dance man in vaudeville. He began picking up day work in Hollywood films in 1933, and by 1937 had worked his way up to a contract with Universal Pictures. Jenks was seen in sizeable character roles in films ranging from the sumptuous Deanna Durbin vehicle 100 Men and a Girl to several entries in the Crime Club B-series. He portrayed sardonic sleuth Bill Crane (a creation of mystery writer Jonathan Latimer) in the Crime Club entries The Westland Case (1937) and Lady in the Morgue (1938). Jenks' familiar Hibernian grin and salty delivery of dialogue graced many a feature of the '40s and '50s; most of the roles were supporting, though Jenks was allowed full leads in an informal series of PRC detective films of the mid '40s. Frank Jenks' most conspicuous assignment of the '50s was as Uthas P. Garvey, the Runyonesque assistant of lovable con artist Alan Mowbray on the TV series Colonel Humphrey Flack, which ran live in 1953-54 and was resurrected for 39 filmed episodes in 1958.

Trivia: The grandson of a governor of New Mexico, pioneering screen cowboy Edmund Cobb began his long career toiling in Colorado-produced potboilers such as Hands Across the Border (1914), the filming of which turned tragic when Cobb's leading lady, Grace McHugh, drowned in the Arkansas River. Despite this harrowing experience, Cobb continued to star in scores of cheap Westerns and was making two-reelers at Universal in Hollywood by the 1920s. But unlike other studio cowboys, Cobb didn't do his own stunts -- despite the fact that he later claimed to have invented the infamous "running w" horse stunt -- and that may actually have shortened his starring career. By the late '20s, he was mainly playing villains. The Edmund Cobb remembered today, always a welcome sign whether playing the main henchman or merely a member of the posse, would pop up in about every other B-Western made during the 1930s and 1940s, invariably unsmiling and with a characteristic monotone delivery. When series Westerns bit the dust in the mid-'50s, Cobb simply continued on television. In every sense of the word a true screen pioneer and reportedly one of the kindest members of the Hollywood chuck-wagon fraternity, Edmund Cobb died at the age of 82 at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: American character actor Paul Hahn appeared in a few low budget films from the mid to late '50s. Prior to that he worked frequently on early television both on programs and in commercials. Much later, Hahn became a stage manager.

Trivia: Ohio-born actor Jim Backus's stage career began in summer stock, where, according to his then-roommate Keenan Wynn, he was as well known for his prowess with the ladies as he was for his on-stage versatility. Backus continued acting in New York, vaudeville, and especially radio in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a regular on radio's The Alan Young Show, portraying Eastern Seaboard snob Hubert Updike III, the prototype for his "Thurston Howell III" characterization on the 1960s TV sitcom Gilligan's Island. In 1949, Backus provided the voice of the nearsighted Mr. Magoo for the first time in the UPA cartoon Ragtime Bear; the actor later claimed that he based this character on his own businessman father. Also in 1949, Backus made his first film appearance in Easy Living, which starred his childhood friend Victor Mature. Backus' most famous screen role was as James Dean's weak-willed, vacillating father in Rebel without a Cause. On television, Backus co-starred with Joan Davis on the I Love Lucy-like 1950s sitcom I Married Joan, and played the leading role of fast-talking news service editor Mike O'Toole on the 1960 syndicated series Hot Off the Wire (aka The Jim Backus Show). In the 1960s, Backus continued to provide the voice of Mr. Magoo in several TV projects, and was seen on-camera in the aforementioned Gilligan's Island, as well as the 1968 TV version of Blondie, wherein Backus played Mr. Dithers. Co-starring as Mrs. Dithers was Backus' wife Henny, who also collaborated with her husband on several amusing volumes of memoirs. Jim and Henny Backus' last two books, Backus Strikes Back and Forgive Us Our Digressions, commented humorously on a deadly serious subject: Parkinson's Disease, the ailment which would eventually cost Backus his life at the age of 76.

Trivia: Whit Bissell was a familiar face to younger baby boomers as an actor mostly associated with fussy official roles -- but those parts merely scratched the surface of a much larger and longer career. Born Whitner Nutting Bissell in New York City in 1909, he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was an alumnus of that institution's Carolina Playmakers company. He made his movie debut with an uncredited role in the 1940 Errol Flynn swashbuckler The Sea Hawk and then wasn't seen on screen again for three years. Starting in 1943, Bissell appeared in small roles in a short string of mostly war-related Warner Bros. productions, including Destination Tokyo. It wasn't until after the war, however, that he began getting more visible in slightly bigger parts. He had a tiny role in the opening third of Ernst Lubitsch's comedy Cluny Brown (1946), but starting in 1947, Bissell became much more closely associated with film noir and related dark, psychologically-focused crime films. Directors picked up on his ability to portray neurotic instability and weaselly dishonesty -- anticipating the kinds of roles in which Ray Walston would specialize for a time -- and used him in pictures such as Brute Force, He Walked by Night, and The Killer That Stalked New York. His oddest and most visible portrayal during this period was in The Crime Doctor's Diary (1949), in which he had a scene-stealing turn as a mentally unhinged would-be composer at the center of a murder case. By the early 1950s, however, in addition to playing fidgety clerks, nervous henchmen, and neurotic suspects (and friends and relatives of suspects), he added significantly to his range of portrayals with his deeply resonant voice, which could convincingly convey authority. Bissell began turning up as doctors, scientists, and other figures whose outward demeanor commanded respect -- mainstream adult audiences probably remember him best for his portrayal of the navy psychiatrist in The Caine Mutiny, while teenagers in the mid-1950s may have known him best for the scientists and psychiatrists that he played in Target Earth and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But it was in two low-budget films that all of Bissell's attributes were drawn together in a pair of decidedly villainous roles, as the mad scientists at the center of I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. The latter, in particular, gave him a chance to read some very "ripe" lines with a straight face, most memorably, "Answer me! I know you have a civil tongue in your mouth -- I sewed it there myself!" But Bissell was never a one-note actor. During this same period, he was showing off far more range in as many as a dozen movies and television shows each year. Among the more notable were Shack Out on 101, in which he gave a sensitive portrayal of a shell-shocked veteran trying to deal with his problems in the midst of a nest of Soviet spies; "The Man With Many Faces" on the series Code 3, in which he was superb as a meek accountant who is pushed into the life of a felon by an ongoing family tragedy; and, finally, in "The Great Guy" on Father Knows Best, where he successfully played a gruff, taciturn employer who never broke his tough demeanor for a moment, yet still convincingly delivered a final line that could bring tears to the eyes of an audience. By the end of the 1950s, Bissell was working far more in television than in movies. During the early 1960s, he was kept busy in every genre, most notably Westerns -- he showed up on The Rifleman and other oaters with amazing frequency. During the mid-1960s, however, he was snatched up by producer Irwin Allen, who cast Bissell in his one costarring role: as General Kirk, the head of the government time-travel program Project Tic-Toc on the science-fiction/adventure series Time Tunnel. He also showed up on Star Trek and in other science-fiction series of the period and continued working in dozens of small roles well into the mid-1980s. Bissell died in 1996.

Trivia: A lovable star with a vivacious personality, mesmerizing smile, and big blue eyes, Joan Blondell, the daughter of stage comic Eddie Blondell (one of the original Katzenjammer Kids), spent her childhood touring the world with her vaudevillian parents and appearing with them in shows. She joined a stock company at age 17, then came to New York after winning a Miss Dallas beauty contest. She then appeared in several Broadway productions and in the Ziegfield Follies before being paired with another unknown, actor James Cagney, in the stage musical Penny Arcade; a year later this became the film Sinners Holiday, propelling her to stardom. Blondell spent eight years under contract with Warner Bros., where she was cast as dizzy blondes and wisecracking gold-diggers. She generally appeared in comedies and musicals and was paired ten times on the screen with actor Dick Powell, to whom she was married from 1936-45. Through the '30s and '40s she continued to play cynical, wisecracking girls with hearts of gold appearing in as many as ten films a year during the '30s. In the '50s she left films for the stage, but then came back to do more mature character parts. Blondell is the author of a roman a clef novel titled Center Door Fancy (1972) and was also married to producer Mike Todd (1947-50).

Trivia: American actress Yvonne Craig trained for a ballet career from age 10 onward. While in high school, Yvonne was accepted by George Balanchine for the School of American Ballet, but she chose instead to tour with the Ballet Russe. Stopping over in Los Angeles, Ms. Craig was approached by a producer asking if she'd like to be in movies. She turned him down, but was more responsive to Hollywood after she later broke her contract with the Ballet Russe. Yvonne's first film was The Young Land (1957), but it remained on the shelf for two years, thus Eighteen and Anxious (1957) was the moviegoers' first introduction to the actress. The Young Land earned Yvonne a contract with Columbia pictures, where because of her exotic looks and flowing black hair she was cast in teen-aged "femme fatale" roles, such as the seductress in The Gene Krupa Story (1960) (though quite thin, she was actually larger than her frail Krupa co-star Sal Mineo, which caused a minor crisis when the script called for Mineo to hold Yvonne in his arms). Amidst movie assignments of off-and-on quality, Yvonne tested for West Side Story, but lost out to Natalie Wood. She did, however, hold the distinction of appearing with Elvis Presley twice in It Happened at the World's Fair (1962) and Kissin' Cousins (1964). In 1967, Yvonne was called upon to replace an incapacitated Mary Ann Mobley as Batgirl (aka Barbara Gordon) on the once-popular TV series Batman. Ms. Craig did her best in a sketchily written part, and was proud of the fact that she handled her motorcycle-riding scenes without a double, but Batman was on its last legs, and was cancelled in early 1968. When acting roles became repetitive--and few and far between--Yvonne drifted out of show business, making her last film in 1971. She co-produced industrial shows for a time, then went into the real estate business, where she did quite well for herself. Though she did appear (at the producer's request) in a low-budget video film in 1991, Yvonne Craig elected not to play the Hollywood Game anymore, and was content to limit her public appearance to film-fan conventions and Batman retrospectives. In 2009, she returned to show business, voicing a character in the animated Olivia series. Craig died in 2015, at age 78.

Trivia: American actor Melvyn Douglas began his stage career shortly after being mustered out of World War I Army service. Douglas secured a position with the Owens Repertory Company, making his debut in a production of Merchant of Venice. He spent the first part of the 1920s touring with Owens Repertory and with the Jessie Bonstelle Company, reaching Broadway in the 1928 drama A Free Soul. Brought to Hollywood in the early talkie "gold rush" for stage-trained actors, Douglas made his film bow in 1931's Tonight or Never. With The Old Dark House (1932), the actor established his standard screen character: a charming, blase young socialite who could exhibit great courage and loyalty when those attributes were called upon. After a brief return to Broadway in 1933, Douglas returned to films in 1935, signing a joint contract with Columbia and MGM. Most often appearing in sophisticated comedies, Douglas was one of the busiest stars in Hollywood, playing in as many as eight films per year. One of the actor's better roles was a supporting one: as Cary Grant's beleaguered lawyer and business adviser in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1947), who spends most of the film trying to keep Grant from spending himself into bankruptcy. Douglas found movie roles scarce in the early 1950s thanks to the "Red Scare." The actor was married to Congresswoman Helen Gahagan, the woman labeled by Richard Nixon as the "pink lady" friendly to communism. The more rabid anti-communists in Washington went after Douglas himself, suggesting that because he was Jewish and had changed his name for professional reasons, he was automatically politically suspect. Douglas began recovering his career with a 1950s detective program, Hollywood Off-Beat - ironically playing a disbarred lawyer trying to regain his reputation. He headed back to Broadway, gaining high critical praise for his "emergence" as a topnotch character actor (his prior stage and film credits were virtually ignored). Some of Douglas' stage triumphs included Inherit the Wind (replacing Paul Muni in the Clarence Darrow part) and The Best Man (which had a character based on Richard Nixon) Douglas' long-overdue Academy Award was bestowed upon the actor for his role as Paul Newman's dying father in Hud (1963); other highlights of Douglas' final Hollywood days included I Never Sang for My Father (1971) and Being There (1979), the latter film winning the actor his second Oscar. Melvyn Douglas died at age 80, just before the release of his final film, Ghost Story (1981).

Trivia: Preston S. Foster's first public appearance was in the church choir in his home town of Ocean City, New Jersey. Gifted with a robust singing voice and muscular physique, Foster was one of the most prominent members of Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Grand Opera Company. After Broadway experience, Foster entered films in 1929, at first specializing in such unsympathetic roles as the rebellious death-row inmate in The Last Mile (1932). He offered strong, complex performances in roles like the Irish rebel leader in The Informer (1935), the blacksmith-turned-gladiator in Last Days of Pompeii (1935), and pompous sharpshooter Frank Butler in Annie Oakley (1935). He played the title character in 1943's Roger Touhy Gangster, which barely made it to the screen thanks to severe censorial cuts. From 1954 through 1955, Preston Foster starred as tugboat skipper/ adventurer/ family man Cap'n John Herrick on the popular syndicated TV series Waterfront.

Trivia: Sharp-featured character actor James Griffith set out in life to be a professional musician. He eased into acting instead, working the little-theatre route in his hometown of Los Angeles. In 1939, Griffith appeared in his first professional production, They Can't Get You Down. Following World War II service, he made his first film, Black Ice (1946). Steadily employed in westerns, James Griffith was generally cast as an outlaw, save for a few comparative good-guy assignments such as Sheriff Pat Garrett in The Law vs. Billy the Kid (1954).

Trivia: One look at Alan Hale Jr. and no one could ever assume he was adopted; Hale Jr. so closely resembled his father, veteran character actor Alan Hale Sr., that at times it appeared that the older fellow had returned to the land of the living. In films from 1933, Alan Jr. was originally cast in beefy, athletic good-guy roles (at 6'3", he could hardly play hen-pecked husbands). After the death of his father in 1950, Alan dropped the "Junior" from his professional name. He starred in a brace of TV action series, Biff Baker USA (1953) and Casey Jones (1957), before his he-man image melted into comedy parts. From 1964 through 1967, Hale played The Skipper (aka Jonas Grumby) on the low-brow but high-rated Gilligan's Island. Though he worked steadily after Gilligan's cancellation, he found that the blustery, slow-burning Skipper had typed him to the extent that he lost more roles than he won. In his last two decades, Alan Hale supplemented his acting income as the owner of a successful West Hollywood restaurant, the Lobster Barrel.

Trivia: Active in Australian radio and stage productions from childhood, Sydney native Michael Pate made his first film in 1949 on his home turf. Pate then moved to Hollywood, where he settled into villainous or obstreperous roles. He is best remembered for his portrayal of Indian chief Vittoro in John Wayne's Hondo (1953), a part he recreated for the 1966 weekly TV adaptation of Hondo, which top-billed Ralph Taeger. Other career highlights include the 1954 TV adaptation of Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Casino Royale, wherein Pate became the first actor to play CIA agent Felix Leiter (though both the character's name and nationality were changed), and PT 109 (1963), in which Pate played the Australian mariner who harangued future President John F. Kennedy (Cliff Robertson).During his Hollywood stay, Pate occasionally dabbled in screenwriting, collaborating on the scripts of Escape from Fort Bravo (1953) and The Most Dangerous Man Alive (1961). In 1968 he returned to Australia where, with such rare exceptions as the weekly TVer Matlock Police, he curtailed his performing activities to concentrate on producing, writing and directing. He produced the 1969 feature film Age of Consent, and later was put in charge of production of Amalgamated Television in Sydney. He made his feature-film directorial debut with the TV movie Tim (1979), which boasted an impressive early starring performance by Mel Gibson. He also adapted the screenplay of Tim from the novel by Colleen McCullough, earning the Australian equivalent of the Emmy Award for his efforts. Michael Pate is the author of two instructional books, The Film Actor and The Director's Eye.

Trivia: Stage actor Andrew Prine was first seen on-screen as James Keller, older brother to Helen, in 1962's The Miracle Worker. The gangling, athletic Prine went on to specialize in frontier adventures and military dramas--sometimes a combination of both, as in the made-for-cable epic Gettysburg (1993). Prine's first starring TV role was as rodeo rider Andy Guthrie in the 1962 weekly Wide Country. Andrew Prine's subsequent TV-series assignments included homesteader Timothy Pride in The Road West (1966), bibulous network sales chief Dan Costello in W.E.B. (1978), and talk-show personality Reed Ellis in Room for Two (1992).

Trivia: Chuck Roberson was a rancher before serving in World War II. Upon his discharge, he sought out film work as a stunt man. While under contract to Republic Pictures, Roberson doubled for John Wayne in Wake of the Red Witch (1948). Thereafter, he worked in virtually all of Wayne's films as stunt double, action coordinator, second-unit director and bit actor. His best speaking part was Sheriff Lordin in the Duke's McClintock (1963). Chuck Roberson's career served as the inspiration for the Lee Majors TV series The Fall Guy (1981-86).