Trivia: A onetime lumberjack, Scott Brady distinguished himself as a Navy boxing champion during the war. After VJ Day, Brady took drama classes, appearing in his first film, Canon City, in 1948. Usually assigned rough-and-tumble roles (many villainous in nature), Brady exhibited a normally untapped comic prowess in the 1952 film The Model and the Marriage Broker. He continued taking lead roles in cheap westerns, horror films and science-fiction pictures into the 1960s, occasionally surfacing in "A" films like Marooned (1969) and Gremlins (1985, his last film). In 1959, Brady starred in a syndicated western series, Shotgun Slade, which allowed him the opportunity to act opposite several of his non-showbiz idols, including war hero Pappy Boyington and athlete Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch; he also had a recurring role in the 1970s anthology Police Story. Scott Brady is the younger brother of Lawrence Tierney, an actor best known for his gangster portrayals.

Trivia: Milburn Stone got his start in vaudeville as one-half of the song 'n' snappy patter team of Stone and Strain. He worked with several touring theatrical troupes before settling down in Hollywood in 1935, where he played everything from bits to full leads in the B-picture product ground out by such studios as Mascot and Monogram. One of his few appearances in an A-picture was his uncredited but memorable turn as Stephen A. Douglas in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln. During this period, he was also a regular in the low-budget but popular Tailspin Tommy series. He spent the 1940s at Universal in a vast array of character parts, at one point being cast in a leading role only because he physically matched the actor in the film's stock-footage scenes! Full stardom would elude Stone until 1955, when he was cast as the irascible Doc Adams in Gunsmoke. Milburn Stone went on to win an Emmy for this colorful characterization, retiring from the series in 1972 due to ill health.

Trivia: Following her training in regional theatre and radio, red-headed actress Amanda Blake was signed by MGM in 1949, where she was briefly groomed for stardom. Among her MGM assignments was 1950's Stars in My Crown, in which she was cast for the first time opposite James Arness. Film fame eluded Amanda, especially after her sizeable role in the 1954 version of A Star is Born was almost completely excised from the release print. By 1955, she had to make do with appearances in such epics as the Bowery Boys' High Society. Amanda's fortunes took a turn for the better later in 1955, when she won the role of Miss Kitty, the euphemistically yclept "hostess" of the Long Branch Saloon on the TV western Gunsmoke, which starred James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon. She remained with Gunsmoke until its next-to-last season in 1974. After Gunsmoke, Amanda went into semi-retirement save for a handful of film projects like the made-for-TV Betrayal (1974), the theatrical releases The Boost (1988) and B.O.R.N (1989), and the 1987 reunion project Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge. Amanda Blake died in 1989 at the age of sixty.

Trivia: On stage from his teens (as part of the "Dancing Verselle Sisters" troupe), Jack Albertson worked in almost any form of live entertainment you could name: vaudeville, burlesque, legitimate stage, even opera. For two years he was straight man to comedian Phil Silvers on the Minsky's Burlesque Circuit, carrying over this partnership in Silvers' hit Broadway musicals High Button Shoes (1947) and Top Banana (1953). Albertson began taking bit roles in films in 1938; among his many fleeting film parts was the postal worker who redirected all of Santa Claus' mail to the New York Courthouse in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). On television, Albertson was a frequent guest star on the Burns and Allen Show and had regular roles on The Thin Man (1957-59) and Ensign O'Toole (1963). He also co-starred with Sam Groom on the 1971 syndicated series Dr. Simon Locke--at least until angrily walking off the series due to its severe budget deficiencies. Albertson became an "overnight success" with his portrayal of Martin Sheen's taciturn father in the 1964 Broadway play The Subject Was Roses, which earned him a Tony Award; he repeated the role in the 1968 film version, winning an Oscar in the process. Albertson added a pair of Emmies to his shelf for his performance as crotchety garage owner Ed Brown on the TV sitcom Chico and the Man (1974-77), and for his guest appearance on a 1975 episode of the variety series Cher. Jack Albertson was the brother of character actress Mabel Albertson.

Trivia: American actor James Arness had an unremarkable Minneapolis childhood, but his wartime experiences shattered that normality - literally. During the battle of Anzio, Arness' right leg was peppered with machine gun bullets, and when the bones were set they didn't mend properly, leaving him with a slight but permanent limp. The trauma of the experience mellowed into aimlessness after the war. Arness became a "beach bum," lived out of his car, and worked intermittently as a salesman and carpenter. Acting was treated equally lackadaisically, but by 1947 Arness had managed to break into Hollywood on the basis of his rugged good looks and his 6'6" frame. Few of his screen roles were memorable, though one has become an object of cult worship: Arness was cast as the menacingly glowing space alien, described by one character as "an intellectual carrot," in The Thing (1951). For a time it looked as though Arness would continue to flounder in supporting roles, while his younger brother, actor Peter Graves, seemed destined for stardom. John Wayne took a liking to Arness when the latter was cast in Wayne's Big Jim McLain (1953). Wayne took it upon himself to line up work for Arness, becoming one of the withdrawn young actor's few friends. In 1955, Wayne was offered the role of Matt Dillon in the TV version of the popular radio series Gunsmoke. Wayne turned it down but recommended that Arness be cast and even went so far as to introduce him to the nation's viewers in a specially filmed prologue to the first Gunsmoke episode. Truth be told, Arness wasn't any keener than Wayne to be tied down to a weekly series, and as each season ended he'd make noises indicating he planned to leave. This game went on for each of the 20 seasons that Gunsmoke was on the air, the annual result being a bigger salary for Arness, more creative control over the program (it was being produced by his own company within a few years) and a sizeable chunk of the profits and residuals. When Gunsmoke finally left the air in 1975, Arness was the only one of the original four principals (including Amanda Blake, Milburn Stone and Dennis Weaver) still appearing on the series. Arness made plans to take it easy after his two-decade Gunsmoke hitch, but was lured back to the tube for a one-shot TV movie, The Macahans (1976). This evolved into the six-hour miniseries How the West Was Won (1977) which in turn led to a single-season weekly series in 1978. All these incarnations starred Arness, back in the saddle as Zeb Macahan. The actor tried to alter his sagebrush image in a 1981 modern-day cop series, McClain's Law -- which being set in the southwest permitted Arness to ride a horse or two. It appeared, however that James Arness would always be Matt Dillon in the hearts and minds of fans, thus Arness obliged his still-faithful public with three Gunsmoke TV movies, the last one (Gunsmoke: The Last Apache) released in 1992. In between these assignments, James Arness starred in a 1988 TV-movie remake of the 1948 western film classic Red River, in which he filled the role previously played by his friend and mentor John Wayne.

Trivia: American character actor Vito Scotti may not be the living legend as described by his publicity packet, but he has certainly been one of the most familiar faces to bob up on small and large screens in the last five decades. Scotti's father was a vaudeville impresario, and his mother an opera singer; in fact, he was born while his mother was making a personal appearance in San Francisco. Launching his own career at seven with an Italian-language commedia del arte troupe in New York, Scotti picked up enough improvisational knowhow to develop a nightclub act. When the once-flourishing Italian theatre circuit began to fade after World War II, Scotti began auditioning for every job that came up -- whether he could do the job or not. Without his trademarked mustache, the diminuitive actor looked like a juvenile well into his thirties, and as such was cast in a supporting role as a timorous East Indian on the "Gunga Ram" segment of the '50s TV kiddie series Andy's Gang. Once the producers discovered that Scotti had mastered several foreign dialects, he was allowed to appear as a comic foil to Andy's Gang's resident puppet Froggy the Gremlin. In nighttime television, Scotti played everything from a murderous bank robber (on Steve Canyon) to a misplaced Japanese sub commander (on Gilligan's Island). He was indispensable to TV sitcoms: Scotti starred during the 1954 season of Life with Luigi (replacing J. Carroll Naish), then appeared as gesticulating Latin types in a score of comedy programs, notably The Dick Van Dyke Show (as eccentric Italian housepainter Vito Giotto) and The Flying Nun (as ever-suspicious Puerto Rican police captain Gaspar Fomento). In theatrical films, Scotti's appearances were brief but memorable. he is always greeted with appreciative audience laughter for his tiny bit as a restauranteur in The Godfather (1972); while in How Sweet it Is (1968) he is hilarious as a moonstruck chef, so overcome by the sight of bikini-clad Debbie Reynolds that he begins kissing her navel! Vito Scotti was still essaying dialect parts into the '90s.

Trivia: A staple of Western-themed films and television series, veteran character actor Rayford Barnes began his onscreen career with John Wayne in Hondo, and in recent years appeared on television in Walker, Texas Ranger and ER. After beginning his career in New York training with Stella Adler and the Neighborhood Playhouse, Barnes moved to San Francisco to open his own theater, and later relocated to San Francisco, where he landed his role in Hondo. A veteran of WWII, Barnes made regular appearances on such TV series as Gunsmoke, The Virginian, and Little House on the Prairie while concurrently appearing in Westerns like The Wild Bunch and The Hunting Party. Rayford Barnes died on November 11, 2000, at St. Andrews Medical Center in Santa Monica, CA. He was 80.

Trivia: Tom Brown was the "boy next door" type in many films, playing ideal, clean-cut, all-Americans youths in many films of the '30s. The son of vaudevillian Harry Brown and musical comedy star Marie (Francis) Brown, he was on radio and stage from infancy, Broadway from age nine. Brown began appearing in silent movies at age ten in 1923. Pleasantly baby-faced, in the thirties he acquired his typecast image, playing students, sons, sweethearts, military cadets, brothers. His first talkie was The Lady Lies (1929), playing Walter Huston's son; he appeared in more than 100 other films. After service in World War Two (as a paratrooper), he attempted to shed his image by playing heavies, without much success; his career was further derailed when he was called up for service in Korea, from where he returned as a lieutenant colonel. After that Brown did little film work but became a familiar face on TV; now bald-headed, he had continuing roles on the TV series Gunsmoke (as rancher Ed O'Conner) and on the soap operas General Hospital (as Al Weeks) and Days of Our Lives (as Nathan Curtis).

Trivia: It was while attending Colorado College that American actor/singer Ken Curtis discovered his talent for writing music. After an artistic apprenticeship on the staff of the NBC radio network's music department in the early '30s, Curtis was hired as male vocalist for the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, then went on to work for bandleader Shep Fields. Preferring country-western to swing, Curtis joined the Sons of the Pioneers singing group in the 1940s, and in this capacity appeared in several western films. Columbia Pictures felt that Curtis had star potential, and gave the singer his own series of westerns in 1945, but Ken seemed better suited to supporting roles. He worked a lot for director John Ford in the '40s and '50s, as both singer and actor, before earning starring status again on the 1961 TV adventure series Ripcord. That was the last we saw of the handsome, clean-shaven Ken Curtis; the Ken Curtis that most western fans are familiar with is the scraggly rustic deputy Festus Haggen on the long-running TV Western Gunsmoke. Ken was hired to replace Dennis Weaver (who'd played deputy Chester Good) in 1964, and remained with Gunsmoke until the series ended its 20-year run in 1975. After that, Ken Curtis retired to his spread in Fresno, California, stepping back into the spotlight on occasion for guest appearances at western-movie conventions.