Trivia: One of the most versatile American movie actors of the mid-20th century, Eddie Albert missed out on stardom but, instead, enjoyed a 50-year-plus screen career that encompassed everything from light comedy and zany satire to the most savage war dramas. Born Edward Albert Heimberger in Rock Island, IL, he attended the University of Minnesota. After working as everything from soda jerk to a circus acrobat (with a short stint as a nightclub and radio singer), Albert headed for New York City, where he scored a hit in the play Brother Rat, portraying military cadet Bing Edwards. He also starred in Room Service on-stage before heading to Hollywood, where he was signed by Warner Bros. to recreate his stage role in the 1938 film Brother Rat. Albert was known for his comedic work during the early years of his career -- his other early major credits included The Boys From Syracuse and Boy Meets Girl on-stage and On Your Toes (1939) onscreen. When he did appear in dramas, such as A Dispatch From Reuters (1940), it was usually as a light, secondary lead or male ingénue, similar to the kinds of parts that Dick Powell played during his callow, youthful days. Albert had an independent streak that made him unusual among actors of his era -- he actually quit Warner Bros. at one point, preferring to work as a circus performer for eight dollars per day. The outbreak of World War II sent Albert into the U.S. Navy as a junior officer, and he distinguished himself during 1943 in the fighting on Tarawa. Assigned as the salvage officer in the shore party of the second landing wave (which engaged in heavy fighting with the Japanese), his job was to examine military equipment abandoned on the battlefield to see if it should be retrieved; but what he found were wounded men who had been left behind under heavy fire. Albert took them off the beach in a small launch not designed for that task, earning commendations for his bravery. A bona fide hero, he was sent home to support a War Bond drive (though he never traded on his war experiences, and didn't discussing them in detail on-camera until the 1990s). When Albert resumed his acting career in 1945, he had changed; he displayed a much more serious, intense screen persona, even when he was doing comedy. He was also a much better actor, though it took ten years, and directors Robert Aldrich and David Miller, to show the movie-going public just how good he was. Ironically, when Albert did return to films, the roles weren't really there for him, so he turned to television and theatrical work during the early '50s. His best movie from this period was The Dude Goes West (1948), an offbeat comedy-Western directed by Kurt Neumann in a vein similar to Along Came Jones. The mid-'50s saw Albert finally achieve recognition as a serious actor, first with his Oscar-nominated supporting performance in William Wyler's hit Roman Holiday (1953) and then, three years later, in Robert Aldrich's brutal World War II drama Attack!, in which he gave the performance of a lifetime as a cowardly, psychopathic army officer. From that point on, Albert got some of the choicest supporting dramatic parts in Hollywood, in high-profile movies such as The Longest Day and small-scale gems like David Miller's Captain Newman, M.D. Indeed, the latter film, in which he played a more sympathetic disturbed military officer, might represent his single best performance onscreen. His ability at comedy wasn't forgotten, however, and, in 1965, he took on the starring role of Oliver Wendell Douglas (opposite Eva Gabor) in the TV series Green Acres, in which he got to play the straight man to an array of top comic performers for six seasons. The show developed a cult following among viewers, ranging from small children to college students, and became a pop-culture institution. The movie business had changed by the time Albert re-entered films in 1971, but he still snagged an Oscar nomination for his work (in a difficult anti-Semitic role) in Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid (1972). He also remained one of Robert Aldrich's favorite actors, and, in 1974, the director gave him a choice role as the sadistic warden, in The Longest Yard. He had another hit series in the mid-'70s with Switch, in which he and Robert Wagner co-starred as a pair of private investigators whose specialty was scamming wrongdoers. Albert was still working steadily into the early '90s, when he was well into his eighties. From the mid-'40s, the actor had acquired a deep, personal interest in politics, and produced a series of educational films intended to introduce grade-school students to notions of democracy and tolerance. By the '60s, he was also deeply involved in the environmental movement. Albert was married for decades to the Mexican-American actress Margo (who died in 1985); their son is the actor Edward Albert.

Trivia: Best known as the Gabor sister with talent, actress Eva Gabor began her career as a cabaret singer and ice skater in her native Hungary. Forced to emigrate to the U.S. at the outbreak of World War II, Gabor was able to secure film work in mystery-woman parts in such films as Forced Landing and Pacific Blackout (both 1941). The actress didn't truly achieve star stature until her Broadway appearance in The Happy Time (1950), though, curiously, she wasn't called upon to appear in the 1952 film version. Gabor's movie career, in fact, remained rooted in supporting roles, such as one of Vincent Price's victims in The Mad Magician (1954) and as Liane d'Exelmans in the Oscar-winning Gigi (1958). Like her sister Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eva has accrued plenty of press coverage thanks to her multiple marriages, but, unlike Zsa Zsa, Gabor has managed to stay off the police blotter -- except for a 1964 incident in which she was nearly killed fighting off a couple of vicious diamond robbers. Gabor's best-loved public appearances were manifested in her five-year run as Lisa Douglas on the popular TV sitcom Green Acres (1965-1970). Contrary to the Gabor Sisters' image of contentiousness, Eva was well liked on the Green Acres set by both co-star Eddie Albert and director Richard Bare, who had nothing but praise for her professionalism and comic timing. Gabor proved she hadn't lost her touch in 1990 when the inevitable Green Acres two-hour revival movie made its way to television. She died in 1995.

Trivia: The son of a circuit-riding Methodist minister, American actor Pat Buttram led a hand-to-mouth existence as a child. He managed to get a scholarship to study theology at Birmingham Southern College, where amateur theatricals captured his enthusiasm. Buttram's first professional job was as a morning announcer at a Birmingham station, bringing home a lofty six dollars per week. Heading for Chicago to see the 1933 World's Fair, Buttram began picking up comedy relief work on radio station WLS's National Barn Dance, where he worked with such stars-to-be as Homer & Jethro and teenaged George Gobel (who would later cite Buttram as his principal comic influence). One of the Barn Dance headliners was singing cowboy Gene Autry, and when Autry inaugurated his starring radio series Melody Ranch in the 1940s, Buttram came aboard as comedy relief. Together, Autry and Buttram would make several pictures at both Republic and Columbia studios (Buttram's first was The Strawberry Roan [1948]); the two also co-starred on Autry's TV show, which ran for 91 episodes in the early '50s. Fast friends but not bosom buddies, Autry and Buttram became a little closer in 1950 when Pat was severely injured in an on-set accident and Gene gave him the encouragement to hang in there even when the doctors had given up hope. Autry retired from acting a multimillionaire in 1956; Buttram, while well off, still had to keep working, so after vetoing the notion of hitting the nightclub trail, he became an immensely popular after-dinner speaker at show-business functions. His subsequent TV roles were in a comical vein, but Buttram made an excellent impression in a feverishly dramatic part in "The Jar," one of the eeriest episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. In 1965, Buttram was cast as duplicitous peddler Mr. Haney on Green Acres, and for the next five seasons kept audiences in stitches as he sold "Mis-ter Douglas" (Eddie Albert) one useless item after another, delivering his laconic sales pitch in his inimitable singsong voice. Off-camera, Buttram was a successful rancher and stock market speculator, as well as a Civil War buff; he was happily married for many years to one-time Western leading lady Sheila Ryan, who left Pat a widower in 1975. Semi-retired by the 1980s, Pat Buttram made a few welcome appearances on TV (guesting on a Green Acres retrospective special on cable television, and providing a voice for the cartoon series Garfield and Friends) and movies (Back to the Future III [1989]).

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.