Trivia: Chuck Connors attended Seton Hall University before embarking on a career in professional sports. He first played basketball with the Boston Celtics, then baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Chicago Cubs. Hardly a spectacular player -- while with the Cubbies, he hit .233 in 70 games -- Connors was eventually shipped off to Chicago's Pacific Coast League farm team, the L.A. Angels. Here his reputation rested more on his cut-up antics than his ball-playing prowess. While going through his usual routine of performing cartwheels while rounding the bases, Connors was spotted by a Hollywood director, who arranged for Connors to play a one-line bit as a highway patrolman in the 1952 Tracy-Hepburn vehicle Pat and Mike. Finding acting an agreeable and comparatively less strenuous way to make a living, Connors gave up baseball for films and television. One of his first roles of consequence was as a comic hillbilly on the memorable Superman TV episode "Flight to the North." In films, Connors played a variety of heavies, including raspy-voiced gangster Johnny O in Designing Woman (1957) and swaggering bully Buck Hannassy in The Big Country (1958). He switched to the Good Guys in 1958, when he was cast as frontiersman-family man Lucas McCain on the popular TV Western series The Rifleman. During the series' five-year run, he managed to make several worthwhile starring appearances in films: he was seen in the title role of Geronimo (1962), which also featured his second wife, Kamala Devi, and originated the role of Porter Ricks in the 1963 film version of Flipper. After Rifleman folded, Connors co-starred with Ben Gazzara in the one-season dramatic series Arrest and Trial (1963), a 90-minute precursor to Law and Order. He enjoyed a longer run as Jason McCord, an ex-Army officer falsely accused of cowardice on the weekly Branded (1965-1966). His next TV project, Cowboy in Africa, never got past 13 episodes. In 1972, Connors acted as host/narrator of Thrill Seekers, a 52-week syndicated TV documentary. Then followed a great many TV guest-star roles and B-pictures of the Tourist Trap (1980) variety. He was never more delightfully over the top than as the curiously accented 2,000-year-old lycanthrope Janos Skorzeny in the Fox Network's Werewolf (1987). Shortly before his death from lung cancer at age 71, Chuck Connors revived his Rifleman character Lucas McCain for the star-studded made-for-TV Western The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1993).

Trivia: A former Mousketeer, Johnny Crawford is best remembered for playing young Mark McCain on The Rifleman (1958-1963). His career slowed after he reached adulthood when he was relegated to supporting roles.

Trivia: The son of a brewery owner, steely-eyed American character actor Paul Fix went the vaudeville and stock-company route before settling in Hollywood in 1926. During the 1930s and 1940s he appeared prolifically in varied fleeting roles: a transvestite jewel thief in the Our Gang two-reeler Free Eats (1932), a lascivious zookeeper (appropriately named Heinie) in Zoo in Budapest (1933), a humorless gangster who puts Bob Hope "on the spot" in The Ghost Breakers (1940), and a bespectacled ex-convict who muscles his way into Berlin in Hitler: Dead or Alive (1943), among others. During this period, Fix was most closely associated with westerns, essaying many a villainous (or at least untrustworthy) role at various "B"-picture mills. In the mid-1930s, Fix befriended young John Wayne and helped coach the star-to-be in the whys and wherefores of effective screen acting. Fix ended up appearing in 27 films with "The Duke," among them Pittsburgh (1942), The Fighting Seabees (1943), Tall in the Saddle (1944), Back to Bataan (1945), Red River (1948) and The High and the Mighty (1954). Busy in TV during the 1950s, Fix often found himself softening his bad-guy image to portray crusty old gents with golden hearts-- characters not far removed from the real Fix, who by all reports was a 100% nice guy. His most familiar role was as the honest but often ineffectual sheriff Micah Torrance on the TV series The Rifleman. In the 1960s, Fix was frequently cast as sagacious backwoods judges and attorneys, as in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

Trivia: The son of an English-immigrant clothier, Mike Kellin decided to become an actor in the second grade, after watching a school production of A Christmas Carol. The restless Kellin briefly attended three colleges before serving in the Navy in World War II. After flunking out of Yale Drama School, Kellin headed to New York, where he studied acting under Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner and Stella Adler. Denied leading-man assignments because of what he described as his "lived-in face," Kellin's big Broadway break came in the role of the abrasive sergeant in the 1949 Broadway comedy At War with the Army; he would reprise his role in the 1950 film version, which starred Martin and Lewis. Kellin went on to win the Tony award for his performance in the 1956 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Pipe Dream. In 1960, Kellin was cast as slovenly Chief Mate McCarthy in The Wackiest Ship in the Army; when this film was adapted into a TV series in 1965, Kellin came along for the ride in substantially the same role, though the character was rechristened as Chief Petty Officer Willie Miller. Mike Kellin's most celebrated movie appearance was his Oscar-nominated role as the father of the imprisoned protagonist in Midnight Express (1978).

Trivia: Lin McCarthy was a World War II veteran who used his G.I. Bill to study acting at Los Angeles' Geller's Theater Workshop. The popular character actor found early success on the Broadway stage before graduating to films with such efforts as Yellowneck (1955) and The D.I. (1957). Born in Norfolk, VA, in February of 1918, McCarthy made his earliest stage appearances in such plays as The Chase, as well as a touring production of Mr. Roberts. After marrying Mr. Roberts co-star Loretta Daye and relocating to Beverly Hills, McCarthy found subsequent television roles on such small screen drama series as Studio One and Philco Television Playhouse. He had an increasingly prevalent presence on television, and would make himself familiar to viewers with frequent appearances on Quincy, The Fugitive, and later Lou Grant and Knight Rider. Retiring from acting in 1984, McCarthy remained in Beverly Hills, CA, until his death from pneumonia in November of 2002. He was 84 years old.

Trivia: American general purpose actor Harlan Warde came to films in 1941 and remained before the cameras until the mid-'60s. During WWII, Warde played many a young man in uniform. Afterwards, he showed up in supporting roles as detectives, doctors, and ministers. One of Harlan Warde's last assignments was the recurring part of Sheriff Brannon on the TV Western series The Virginian (1962-1971).