Trivia: Actress Joyce Bulifant clocked in as a television mainstay for several decades, nearly always in small supporting roles or guest spots, on series such as Perry Mason, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and Dr. Kildare. Beginning in 1971, one year into the eight-season run of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bulifant landed an assignment as a regular on that program; she played Marie Slaughter, the wife of amiable newswriter Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod) -- an assignment that carried her through the final season of the series. During the 1970s, she also appeared as a regular contestant/participant on the game show Match Game, alongside such "Me Decade" stars as McLean Stevenson and Mary Tyler Moore Show co-star Betty White. Bulifant's small-screen work continued unabated for several decades; in time, she also moved into occasional bit parts and supporting roles in features. She was particularly memorable (and visible) as Mrs. Davis, the mother of a sick child whose IV is knocked out by a klutzy singing nun, in the farce Airplane! (1980), and then, around 20 years later, experienced a career resurgence thanks to her son, director John Mallory Asher (the child of Bulifant and beach movie director William Asher), who cast her in the road comedy Diamonds (1999) and the critically reviled sex farce Dirty Love (2004).

Trivia: Actor Dick York started out as a child performer on radio, playing important roles in such airwaves favorites as Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. In the early '50s, York began showing up in New York-based instructional films, including a now-infamous reel about proper dating etiquette. Establishing himself as one of Broadway's most versatile young character actors, he was seen in such major productions as Tea and Sympathy, Bus Stop, and Night of the Auk. In films from 1955, York's most famous movie role was schoolteacher Bertram Cates in Inherit the Wind, the 1960 dramatization of the Scopes Monkey Trial. Though a prolific TV guest star, he didn't settle down on a weekly series until 1962, when he co-starred with Gene Kelly and Leo G. Carroll in a short-lived video adaptation of Going My Way. Two years later, he landed his signature role: Darren Stephens, the eternally flustered husband of glamorous witch Samantha Stephens (Elizabeth Montgomery), in Bewitched. He remained with the series until 1969, when a recurring back ailment (the legacy of an on-set injury suffered while filming the 1959 feature They Came to Cordura) forced York to relinquish the role of Darren to Dick Sargent. Though he was for all intents and purposes retired from acting, York remained active on behalf of several pro-social causes. He was the founder of Acting for Life, an organization designed to help the homeless help themselves. Living a spartan existence in Grand Rapids, MI, an increasingly infirm Dick York tirelessly continued giving of himself for the benefit of others until his death from emphysema in 1992.

Trivia: Judi Meredith was not much more than a tabloid celebrity in the late '50s and early '60s; her onscreen career was improbable enough to almost qualify as a minor miracle. Born Judith Clare Boutin in Portland, OR, she was an athletic child and became a figure skater. She turned professional and became a star performer with the Ice Follies in her teens. Her career was cut short, though, by an accident in which her back was broken. Her doctors told her that she would never skate again, but she resumed her career after a period of recovery until she broke her kneecap, which finally did end her professional skating. She turned to acting in her late teens and was performing in stock when she was spotted by George Burns, who liked her outgoing personality and healthy, athletic look. He cast her in a recurring role late in the run of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, playing Bonnie Sue McAfee in 1957. From there it was on to Studio One in "The Left-Handed Welcome" and a boisterous guest performance in the John Payne Western series The Restless Gun; she also played herself in the short-lived series The George Burns Show (1958). Meredith began appearing in movies that year, in pictures such as the Western drama Wild Heritage and teen romance Summer Love. She quickly began moving into actor and celebrity circles, and at one time was linked romantically to Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra. Meredith's biggest theatrical film role was as Princess Elaine in the fantasy-adventure film Jack the Giant Killer (1962). Her career arc was confined largely to television; however, Meredith's work included a string of appearances on the show Ben Casey, and she delivered a truly poignant performance in "Errant Knight," an episode of Bonanza featuring Dan Blocker and John Doucette. She was in her element as the whip-wielding Calamity Jane, working opposite Wild Bill Hickock (Robert Culp) in the made-for-TV film The Raiders (1963). She also had a role in William Castle's The Night Walker (1964), but two years later, she closed out the major part of her career in Curtis Harrington's Planet of Blood, made at American International Pictures. She was largely absent from the screen until 1971's Western comedy Something Big, and was last seen on television in an episode of Emergency two years later.

Trivia: Brando-esque leading man Michael Parks was one of five children of an itinerant laborer. Like the rest of his family, Parks drifted from job to job in his early teens, briefly marrying at 15. When he wasn't nickel-and-diming it as a migrant worker, Parks acted with amateur theater groups up and down the California coast. Discovered by an agent in 1960, Parks was signed to a Universal contract, spending most of his time on suspension due to his ornery outspokenness. He settled down long enough to play an au naturel Adam in John Huston's The Bible (1966) and to star as a young motorcyclist in search of the Real America on the 1969 TV series Then Came Bronson. Parks astonished his anti-establishment fans in 1968 when he supported George Wallace for the presidency. Parks' film appearances since then have been confined to second-string productions, though he managed to attract attention in 1977 by portraying Bobby Kennedy in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover. In 1990, Parks co-produced as well as starred in Caged Fury, though it was his turn as Canadian mobster Jean Renault in David Lynch's Twin Peaks that offered him the most exposure that year. Numerous film and television roles followed, and in 1996 director Quentin Tarantino gave Parks a career-boost by casting him in the violent horror/crime hybrid From Dusk Till Dawn (a role that the actor would reprise in Kill Bill, Vol. 1, Death Proof, and Planet Terror). A turn as the volatile leader of a religious cult in Kevin Smith's Red State capitalized on Parks' intense onscreen charisma, and in 2012 he could be spotted in director Ben Affleck's Argo. And though the documentary Kevin Smith: Burn in Hell found the outspoken Clerks director jokingly chiding "View Askewniverse" veteran Affleck for "cherry-picking" Parks on the strength of his Red State performance, few would deny that the talented Parks would have likely won the role on his own merit. Parks died in 2017, at age 77.

Trivia: A versatile, commanding, leathery character actor, he learned to raise and ride broncos on his family's ranch during his youth. He attended college for two years, became a seaman, then began his performing career as a radio announcer; he became nationally known as an announcer on the "March of Time" broadcasts. Onscreen from the late '40s, he often portrayed law officers; he was also convincing as a villain. He was well-known for his TV work; he starred in the series Naked City and Wagon Train. He was married to actress Jeanette Nolan, with whom he appeared in Saddle Tramp (1950) and Two Rode Together (1961); they also acted together on radio, and in the late '60s they joined the cast of the TV series The Virginian, portraying a married couple. Their son was actor Tim McIntire.

Trivia: Robert Fuller spent his first decade in show business trying his best to avoid performing. After his film debut in 1952's Above and Beyond, Fuller studied acting with Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse but never exhibited any real dedication. He tried to become a dancer but gave that up as well, determining that dancing was "sissified." Fuller rose to nominal stardom fairly rapidly in the role of Jess Harper on the popular TV western Laramie (1959-63). Once he found his niche in cowboy attire, he stuck at it in another series, Wagon Train, turning down virtually all offers for "contemporary" roles. When westerns began dying out on television in the late 1960s, Fuller worked as a voiceover actor in commercials, earning some $65,000 per year (a tidy sum in 1969). On the strength of his performance in the Burt Topper-directed motorcycle flick The Hard Ride, Fuller was cast by producer Jack Webb as chief paramedic Kelly Brackett on the weekly TVer Emergency, which ran from 1972 through 1977. In 1994, Robert Fuller was one of several former TV western stars who showed up in cameo roles in the Mel Gibson movie vehicle Maverick.

Trivia: Redheaded leading man Robert Horton attended UCLA, served in the Coast Guard during World War II, and acted in California-based stage productions before making his entree into films in 1951. Horton's television career started off on a high note in 1955, when he was cast in the weekly-TV version of King's Row as Drake McHugh (the role essayed by Ronald Reagan in the 1942 film version). The series barely lasted three months, but better things were on the horizon: in 1957, Horton was hired to play frontier scout Flint McCullough in Wagon Train, which became the highest-rated western on TV. Horton remained with Wagon Train until 1962. He then did some more stage work before embarking on his third series, 1965's The Man Called Shenandoah. When this one-season wonder ran its course, Horton toured the dinner-theatre circuit, then in 1982 accepted a major role on the popular daytime soap opera As the World Turns. Horton continued acting until the late 1980s. He died in 2016, at age 91.