Trivia: The son of a New York University professor of marketing, American actor James Drury spent his youth dividing his time between Manhattan and Oregon, where his mother ran a ranch. At age 8, Drury made his stage debut as King Herod-- crepe beard and all--in a Christmas production at a Greenwich Village settlement house. Sidelined by polio at age 10, Drury became a voracious reader, often acting out the characters in the books. At NYU, Drury dove full-force into acting, developing his craft to such an extent that in 1954 he was signed by MGM. His film roles were of the "other guy in the room" calibre (Forbidden Planet [1956]), so Drury's contract lapsed, after which he spent time at 20th Century-Fox in support of Pat Boone (Bernardine [1957]) and Elvis Presley (Love Me Tender [1958]). In 1958, Drury was cast by Screen Gems studios in a TV pilot film based on the Owen Wister story The Virginian. It didn't sell, but in 1962 Universal optioned the rights to The Virginian, bringing Drury in along for the ride. He spent the next nine years in The Virginian, during which time Drury's reputation for recalcitrance on the set and reluctance to reveal anything of himself in interviews earned him the soubriquet "The Garbo of the Sagebrush" (a nickname bestowed by Drury's father!) James Drury wasn't seen much after The Virginian, though he did show up on the small screen as the lead in an Emergency clone titled Firehouse, which ran on the ABC network for eight months in 1974.

Trivia: Raw-boned blonde leading man Doug McClure came to films in 1957, but it was television that made him a star. He played secondary roles on such MCA series as The Overland Trail (1960) and Checkmate (1961-62) before striking paydirt as Trampas on the long-running (1962-71) western series The Virginian. During his first flush of stardom, McClure played leads in two Universal remakes, Beau Geste (1966) and The King's Pirate (the 1967 remake of Errol Flynn's Against All Flags). He also dashed through a trio of British-filmed Edgar Rice Burroughs derivations, The Land That Time Forgot (1974), At the Earth's Core (1976) and The People That Time Forgot (1977). He perpetuated his athletic, devil-may-care image into his brief 1975 TVer, Search (1975). In the late 1980s, Doug McClure reemerged as an agreeable comic actor, playing an Eastwoodish movie-star-cum-small-town-mayor in the syndicated sitcom Out of This World (1987-88).

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).

Trivia: Actor Clu Gulager started out as the latest in a long line of Brando/Dean "method" types in the late 1950s. Gulager's searing interpretation of Mad Dog Coll on a 1959 episode of The Untouchables, coupled with his multi-faceted portrayal of Billy the Kid on the TV western series The Tall Man (1960-62) gained him a brief fan following. He was also quite impressive as Lee Marvin's fellow hit man in The Killers (1964), which would have been the very first made-for-TV movie had not its excessive violence necessitated a theatrical release. Turning prematurely gray in the late 1960s, Gulager went on to play flinty authority figures on such weekly series as The Survivors (1969), San Francisco International Airport (1971) and The MacKenzies of Paradise Cove (1979). He was also seen in numerous miniseries, most prominently as Lt. Merrick in Once an Eagle (1976) and General Sheridan in North and South II (1986). One of his better big-screen roles was Abilene in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971). Briefly entertaining notions of becoming a film director, Clu Gulager helmed the obscure 1969 short subject A Day with the Boys.

Trivia: Whenever actor Ed Platt blew one of his lines in his role of "The Chief" in the TV comedy series Get Smart, star Don Adams would cry out "Is John Doucette available?" Adams was kidding, of course, but he was not alone in his high regard for the skill and versatility of the deep-voiced, granite-featured Doucette. In films on a regular basis since 1947 (he'd made his official movie debut in 1943's Two Tickets to London), Doucette was usually cast in roles calling for bad-tempered menace, but was also adept at dispensing dignity and authority. He was equally at home with the archaic dialogue of Julius Caesar (1953) and Cleopatra (1963) as he was with the 20th-century military patois of 1970's Patton, in which he played General Truscott. John Doucette's many TV credits include a season on the syndicated MacDonald Carey vehicle Lock-Up (1959), and the role of Captain Andrews on The Partners (1971), starring Doucette's old friend and admirer Don Adams.

Trivia: Flinty character actor Paul Birch was strictly a Broadway performer until switching to films in 1952. It didn't take long for Birch to be typecast in science fiction films after playing one of the three "vaporized" locals at the beginning of 1953's The War of the Worlds. Birch's more memorable cinema fantastique assignments included The Beast With a Million Eyes (1955), The Day the World Ended (1956), The 27th Day (1957), and Queen of Outer Space (1958). In 1957, he played the melancholy leading role in Roger Corman's Not of This Earth (1957). Not exclusively confined to flying-saucer epics, Paul Birch was also seen in such roles as the Police Chief in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and the Mayor in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

Trivia: General purpose actor Harry Lauter began showing up in films around 1948. Long associated with Columbia Pictures, Lauter appeared in featured roles in such major releases as The Big Heat (1953), Hellcats of the Navy (1957) and The Last Hurrah (1958). He also acted in the studio's "B"-western and horror product. Making occasional visits to Republic, Lauter starred in three serials: Canadian Mounties vs. the Atomic Invaders (1953), Trader Tom of the China Seas (1954) and King of the Carnival (1956), Republic's final chapter play. On TV, he co-starred with Preston Foster in Waterfront (1954) and was second-billed as Ranger Clay Morgan in Tales of the Texas Rangers (1955-59). After appearing in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Harry Lauter retired from acting to concentrate on painting and managing his art and antique gallery.

Trivia: American character actor of stage, screen, and TV Lee J. Cobb, born Leo Jacob or Jacoby, was usually seen scowling and smoking a cigar. As a child, Cobb showed artistic promise as a virtuoso violinist, but any hope for a musical career was ended by a broken wrist. He ran away from home at age 17 and ended up in Hollywood. Unable to find film work there, he returned to New York and acted in radio dramas while going to night school at CCNY to learn accounting. Returning to California in 1931, he made his stage debut with the Pasadena Playhouse. Back in New York in 1935, he joined the celebrated Group Theater and appeared in several plays with them, including Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy. He began his film career in 1937, going on to star and play supporting roles in dozens of films straight through to the end of his life. Cobb was most frequently cast as menacing villains, but sometimes appeared as a brooding business executive or community leader. His greatest triumph on stage came in the 1949 production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman in which he played the lead role, Willy Loman (he repeated his performance in a 1966 TV version). Between 1962-66, he also appeared on TV in the role of Judge Garth in the long-running series The Virginian. He was twice nominated for "Best Supporting Actor" Oscars for his work in On the Waterfront (1954) and The Brothers Karamazov (1958).

Trivia: Endearing herself to television audiences as the devoted sitcom wife of Robert Young on Father Knows Best, petite brunette actress Jane Wyatt also essayed frequent big-screen roles highlighted by memorable performances in such films as Lost Horizon (1937), in which she plays Sondra, the lover of Robert Conway (Ronald Colman). Born in Campgaw, NJ, on August 12, 1910, to an investment banker father and a drama critic mother, and raised as a Manhattanite from age three, Wyatt received her formal education at the Chapin School and -- very briefly -- at New York City's Barnard College, where she spent two listless years. Following the irresistible call of the stage, Wyatt bucked university life in favor of honing her acting skills at Berkshire Playhouse in the western Massachusetts community of Stockbridge. Shortly after this, she accepted a position as understudy to Rose Hobart in a Broadway production of Trade Winds. Universal soon took note of Wyatt's talents and offered her a film role, in Frankenstein director James Whale's One More River (1934). Wyatt embarked on a lucrative screen career following her impressive debut, and many consider the performance in Lost Horizon her crowning achievement, though additional cinematic work throughout the 1940s proved both steady and rewarding. Following memorable performances in Clifford Odets' None But the Lonely Heart (1944) (alongside Cary Grant) and Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement (1947, with Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire), the now-established actress transitioned smoothly into television in the early '50s, given her standing role as the matriarch of the Anderson family (mother of Bud, Princess, and Kitten, and wife of Jim) on the long-running CBS sitcom Father Knows Best. Wyatt deservedly won three Emmys for that role, and remained with the program over the course of its six-year run of original episodes. (Riding the crest of high ratings, CBS stretched prime-time reruns into the spring of 1963.) This marked the only major recurring prime-time role of Wyatt's career, though (alongside the work of others such as Barbara Billingsley and Harriet Nelson) it did much to establish the now-iconic image of the "archetypal 1950s sitcom mother," and earned the actress a beloved spot in American pop-culture history. In addition to this, Wyatt made occasional appearances, during the Father Knows Best run, on a dramatic anthology series headlined by her small-screen husband, Robert Montgomery Presents (NBC, 1950-1957). Six years after new episodes of Father wrapped, Star Trek landed on NBC, and Wyatt turned up occasionally on that program, as Mr. Spock's mother, Amanda Spock. She also made a guest appearance, alongside the late Bob Cummings, on the early-'70s comedic anthology series Love, American Style (the two play parents who are overanxious about their daughter's decision to embark on a European "swingers' holiday" with a boyfriend). If the preponderance of Wyatt's roles in the '70s, '80s, and '90s were largely supporting turns, it certainly said nothing about the actress' talent. She remained in the public eye as a fixture of such made-for-television features as You'll Never See Me Again (1973) and Amelia Earhart (1976). Though she entered semi-retirement in the late '70s, Wyatt later appeared (very infrequently) as an occasional supporting character in television's St. Elsewhere and reprised her role as Spock's mother in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).On October 20, 2006, after years of inactivity, Jane Wyatt died of natural causes in her sleep, at her home in Bel Air, CA. She was 96.