Trivia: Hardcase leading man Howard Duff built his reputation on radio, where among several other assignments he was cast as Dashiell Hammett's two-fisted private eye Sam Spade. He made so vivid an impression in this role that, when cast in his first film Brute Force (1947), he was given special billing in the credits as "radio's Sam Spade." His burgeoning film career was slowed down in the early 1950s by the iniquities of the Hollywood Blacklist. Duff's no-nonsense image was softened into sitcom buffoonery when, in 1957, he was cast in TV's Mr. Adams and Eve. His co-star was his then-wife Ida Lupino, and the series' producer was Lupino's previous husband Collier Young. Ida was a frequent director for Duff's subsequent TV series Dante (1960), in which he more-or-less reprised his Sam Spade characterization. Duff's later TV assignments included a three-year starring stint on Felony Squad (1966-69) and supporting roles in the prime time serials Flamingo Road and Knot's Landing. In the 1970s, Howard Duff returned to filmmaking as a character actor, scoring critical successes with his roles as an eternally inebriated relative in Altman's A Wedding (1978) and as Dustin Hoffman's attorney in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).

Trivia: Affable "good guy" singer/actor Dick Foran was the son of a U.S. senator. After a tentative stab at a career as a geologist, Foran achieved prominence as a band and radio singer. Billed as Nick Foran, he made his screen debut as a "Paul Revere" type in a surrealistic production number in Fox's Stand Up and Cheer (1934). Signed by Warner Bros., Foran was utilized as that studio's "answer" to Gene Autry in a series of "B" musical westerns; ironically, he also played a devastatingly parodied cowboy star in 1938's Boy Meets Girl. After enjoying nominal stardom in Warners' second-feature product--and incidentally picking up an Oscar nomination for his supporting work in The Petrified Forest (1936)--Foran moved to Universal, where he worked in everything from serials to horror films to Abbott and Costello comedies. In one A&C romp, Ride 'Em Cowboy (1942), Foran introduced what would become his signature theme, the lovely "I'll Remember April." Those who worked with Foran during this period remember him being as likable and uncomplicated offscreen as on; one Universal starlet never tired of recalling the time that Foran invited her into his dressing room then asked quite sincerely if she wanted to play a game of jacks! Dick Foran remained in films and TV as a reliable, pleasantly portly character actor into the 1960s; one of his last films was Donovan's Reef, which starred his longtime friend John Wayne.

Trivia: For much of the early '50s, Ed Kemmer was one of the most popular leading men on television, at least among younger viewers, as a result of his portrayal of Commander Buzz Corry on the series Space Patrol. Born in Reading, PA, in 1921, Kemmer learned to fly while still in his teens and joined the U.S. Army Air Force when the United States entered World War II. A fighter pilot, he was shot down on his 47th mission, in June of 1944, just a few days after D-Day, and was imprisoned at Stalag Luft 3. He escaped on one occasion in the spring of 1945, was recaptured, and then was liberated a by American troops a few days later, during the final phase of the war. After leaving the service, Kemmer decided to take advantage of the G.I. Bill of Rights by studying at the College of Theater Arts at the Pasadena Playhouse. He finished the program in 18 months instead of the usual two years and began doing stage work, though some of that didn't take him too far from his background as a pilot -- in addition to such plays as John Loves Mary and Arsenic and Old Lace, Kemmer also acted in a production of the drama Command Decision, which dealt with bomber pilots and their commanding officers during World War II. Kemmer later auditioned for and was cast in the role of Commander Buzz Corry on Space Patrol, initially for eight dollars an episode in the 15-minute version of the show, which was broadcast locally in San Francisco. The money went up when the newly-organized ABC network picked up the series and it was expanded to 30 minutes. Space Patrol ran for five seasons, generating many hundreds of episodes, all of them done live and most of the network shows preserved on kinescope. Kemmer developed a serious following among the younger viewers who comprised its audience, even long past 1955, as the shows were re-broadcast under the syndicated title Satellite Police into the early '60s. With his clean-cut good looks, the early thirtyish Kemmer was the quintessential space hero, strong and authoritative, yet young enough to seem a bit more accessible, like an older brother, than the more distant, avuncular figure of Al Hodge in Captain Video. Kemmer was part of the first generation of actors to break through to stardom on the small-screen, but after more than 1,000 live broadcasts in a five-year period, he didn't want to remain in television. He moved into motion pictures in 1956 with Abner Biberman's prison escape drama Behind the High Wall. Over the next few years, Kemmer played leading roles in low-budget pictures such as The Hot Angel (which utilized his experience as a pilot), and Calypso Joe and Sierra Stranger, before he moved up to supporting parts in major studio films such as The Crowded Sky and the Barrymore family biography Too Much, Too Soon, in which he got to meet and work with Errol Flynn. Where Kemmer became an actual star with a following, however, was in the area of science fiction -- he played leading roles in such B-pictures as Giant From the Unknown (billed as Edward Kemmer), directed by Richard Cunha, and Earth vs. the Spider, made by Bert I. Gordon. Both of those movies became hits on the drive-in and neighborhood theater circuits to which they were released, and subsequently became cult favorites on television; indeed, Giant From the Unknown has even been issued on DVD in the 21st century. By the end of the 1950s, Kemmer had also started a second small-screen career, this time in soap operas, beginning with the West Coast drama Clear Horizon and continuing with Edge of Night, and then encompassing dozens of other daytime dramas, including The Doctors, Somerset, As the World Turns, The Guiding Light, and Ryan's Hope. He was also a frequent guest performer on dozens of prime-time series, including Lassie, Perry Mason, The Virginian, Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, The Rebel, Combat, and Twilight Zone. Kemmer reportedly was still receiving fan mail over Space Patrol in 2001, a half century after the series went on the air.

Trivia: Yale grad John Hoyt had been a history instructor, acting teacher and nightclub comedian before linking up with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre in 1937. He remained with Welles until he joined the Army in 1945. After the war, the grey-haired, deadly-eyed Hoyt built up a screen reputation as one of most hissable "heavies" around, notably as the notorious political weathervane Talleyrand in Desiree (1954). He was a bit kinder onscreen as the Prophet Elijah in Sins of Jezebel. Nearly always associated with mainstream films, Hoyt surprised many of his professional friends when he agreed to co-star in the softcore porn spoof Flesh Gordon; those closest to him, however, knew that Hoyt had been a bit of a Bohemian all his life, especially during his frequent nudist colony vacations. TV fans of the '80s generation will remember John Hoyt as Grandpa Stanley Kanisky on the TV sitcom Gimme a Break; those with longer memories might recall that Hoyt played the doctor who told Ben Gazzara that he had only two years to live on the pilot for the 1960s TV series Run For Your Life. Hoyt also holds a footnote in Star Trek history playing the doctor in the first pilot episode, "The Cage."

Trivia: Barton MacLane may have been born on Christmas Day, but there was precious little chance that he'd ever be cast as Santa Claus. A star athlete at Wesleyan University, MacLane won his first movie role in the 1924 silent Quarterback as the result of his football skills. This single incident sparked his interest in performing, which he pursued on a serious basis at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He performed in stock, on Broadway, and in bit parts in films lensed at Paramount's Astoria studios (notably the Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts). In 1932, MacLane wrote a slice-of-life play titled Rendezvous, selling it to influential Broadway producer Arthur Hopkins on the proviso, that he, MacLane, be given the lead. The play was a success, leading to a lucrative film contract from Warner Bros. Most effectively cast as a swaggering villain ("who never spoke when shouting would do," as historian William K. Everson observed), MacLane played good-guy leads in several Warner "B"s: he played the conclusion-jumping lieutenant Steve McBride in the studio's Torchy Blaine series. Free-lancing in the 1940s, MacLane made an unfortunate return to writing in 1941, penning the screenplay for the PRC quickie Man of Courage; it is reported that audiences erupted in shrieks of laughter when MacLane, reciting his own lines, recalled his childhood days on the farm by declaring "Boy! Did I love ta plow!" He was better served in a brace of John Huston-directed films, beating up Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and being beaten up by Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. MacLane's TV-series work included a starring stint on The Outlaws (1960-62) and the recurring role of General Peterson on I Dream of Jeannie (1965-69). Having come into the world on a holiday, Barton MacLane died on New Years' Day, 1969; he was survived by his wife, actress Charlotte Wynters.

Trivia: Probably no one came by the label "Runyon-esque" more honestly than Polish-born actor George E. Stone; a close friend of writer Damon Runyon, Stone was seemingly put on this earth to play characters named Society Max and Toothpick Charlie, and to mouth such colloquialisms as "It is known far and wide" and "More than somewhat." Starting his career as a Broadway "hoofer," the diminutive Stone made his film bow as "the Sewer Rat" in the 1927 silent Seventh Heaven. His most prolific film years were 1929 to 1936, during which period he showed up in dozens of Warner Bros. "urban" films and backstage musicals, and also appeared as the doomed Earle Williams in the 1931 version of The Front Page. He was so closely associated with gangster parts by 1936 that Warners felt obligated to commission a magazine article showing Stone being transformed, via makeup, into an un-gangsterish Spaniard for Anthony Adverse (1936). For producer Hal Roach, Stone played three of his oddest film roles: a self-pitying serial killer in The Housekeeper's Daughter (1938), an amorous Indian brave in Road Show (1940), and Japanese envoy Suki Yaki in The Devil With Hitler (1942). Stone's most popular role of the 1940s was as "the Runt" in Columbia's Boston Blackie series. In the late '40s, Stone was forced to severely curtail his acting assignments due to failing eyesight. Though he was totally blind by the mid-'50s, Stone's show business friends, aware of the actor's precarious financial state, saw to it that he got TV and film work, even if it meant that his co-stars had to literally lead him by the hand around the set. No one was kinder to George E. Stone than the cast and crew of the Perry Mason TV series, in which Stone was given prominent billing as the Court Clerk, a part that required nothing more of him than sitting silently at a desk and occasionally holding a Bible before a witness.

Trivia: Starting his Hollywood career in or around 1951, American actor Robert Foulk was alternately passive and authoritative in such westerns as Last of the Badmen (1957), The Tall Stranger (1957), The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and Cast a Long Shadow (1958). He remained a frontiersmen for his year-long stint as bartender Joe Kingston on the Joel McCrea TV shoot-em-up Wichita Town (1959) (though he reverted to modern garb as the Anderson family's next-door neighbor in the '50s sitcom Father Knows Best). In non-westerns, Foulk usually played professional men, often uniformed. Some of his parts were fleeting enough not to have any designation but "character bit" (vide The Love Bug [1968]), but otherwise there was no question Foulk was in charge: as a doctor in Tammy and the Doctor (1963), a police official in Bunny O'Hare (1971) or a railroad conductor in Emperor of the North (1973). Robert Foulk was given extensive screen time in the Bowery Boys' Hold That Hypnotist (1957), as the title character; and in Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), playing straight as Sheriff Glick opposite such "Merrie Men" as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin Sammy Davis Jr. and Bing Crosby.

Trivia: In the 1959 Twilight Zone episode "Walking Distance," Gig Young comments that he thinks he's seen drugstore counterman Byron Foulger before. "I've got that kind of face" was the counterman's reply. Indeed, Foulger's mustachioed, bespectacled, tremble-chinned, moon-shaped countenance was one of the most familiar faces ever to grace the screen. A graduate of the University of Utah, Foulger developed a taste for performing in community theatre, making his Broadway debut in the '20s. Foulger then toured with Moroni Olsen's stock company, which led him to the famed Pasadena Playhouse as both actor and director. In films from 1936, Foulger usually played whining milksops, weak-willed sycophants, sanctimonious sales clerks, shifty political appointees, and the occasional unsuspected murderer. In real life, the seemingly timorous actor was not very easily cowed; according to his friend Victor Jory, Foulger once threatened to punch out Errol Flynn at a party because he thought that Flynn was flirting with his wife (Mrs. Foulger was Dorothy Adams, a prolific movie and stage character actress). Usually unbilled in "A" productions, Foulger could count on meatier roles in such "B" pictures as The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) and The Panther's Claw (1943). In the Bowery Boys' Up in Smoke (1957), Foulger is superb as a gleeful, twinkly-eyed Satan. In addition to his film work, Byron Foulger built up quite a gallery of portrayals on television; one of his final stints was the recurring role of engineer Wendell Gibbs on the popular sitcom Petticoat Junction.

Trivia: A rotund, balding supporting actor, Henry Kulky began his show business career wrestling professionally under the alarming name of "Bomber Kulkovich." Fellow wrestler-turned-screen actor Mike Mazurki arranged for Kulky to make his acting debut in Call Northside 777 (1947), and the die was cast. Because of his rather off-putting appearance, Kulky became typecast as thugs, gangsters, and bartenders, who were at times quite lovable characters. He even showed up in a Western or two, including a 1949 Durango Kid entry. Like many supporting players of his generation, Kulky would enjoy his greatest popularity on television, including a five-year stint on Life of Riley and as Chief Curly Jones on The Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The latter was his final role; he died of a heart attack while studying a script during the show's second season.