Trivia: The son of actress Nan Kelly Yorke, Jack Kelly was the younger brother of stage and film star Nancy Kelly. Like Nancy, Jack was a professional from an early age, acting in radio and on stage before the age of 10, and in films from 1937 (he is quite prominent in a brace of 1939 20th Century-Fox films, Young Mr. Lincoln and The Story of Alexander Graham Bell). He reemerged as a leading man in the early 1950s, appearing in such films as Forbidden Planet (1956, as the ill-fated Lieutenant Farnam). Signed by Warner Bros. in 1955, Kelly starred as Dr. Paris Mitchell in the weekly TV version of the 1942 film King's Row. He went on to play gamblin' man Bart Maverick on the longer-running Warners western series Maverick. Though his popularity never matched that of his co-star James Garner, Kelly still developed a fan following as Bart; he remained with the series from 1957 until its cancellation in 1962, appearing opposite such Garner successors as Roger Moore and Robert Colbert. Kelly dabbled in a little bit of everything after that: hosting the anthology series NBC Comedy Playhouse (1973), emceeing the game show Sale of the Century (1969-71), and playing hard-nosed Lt. Ryan on the Teresa Graves series Get Christie Love (1974) and Harry Hammond on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (1977-79). He revived the Bart Maverick character on 1978's The New Maverick and the 1990 TV movie The Gambler Returns: Luck of the Draw. Chances are that, had he lived, Jack Kelly would have been invited to co-star again with Garner in the 1994 Mel Gibson theatrical-feature version of Maverick.

Trivia: A writer turned actor/director, Mel Welles was one of the most enduring cult figures from '50s exploitation pictures. Born in New York City in 1924, Welles moved into films after careers in clinical psychology, writing, and radio, and also performed in theater and wrestling promotion in Canada. He arrived in Hollywood at just about the time that his services were needed, in the first half of the 1950s -- filmmakers were eager to make movies appealing to teens, and in addition to some skills as an actor, Welles, who had written for jazz satirist Lord Buckley, was a natural both as a performer and writer of "special material" to jazz up the scripts and action of the exploitation pictures being ground out. His most notable work in this area was in the 1958 drug-and-sexploitation classic High School Confidential, directed by Jack Arnold, for which Welles provided two stunningly funny (and effective) parodies of beat poetry and jargon, and also served as the movie's resident expert on marijuana. During this period, Welles -- who was a master of numerous accents and dialects -- appeared in numerous Roger Corman films (Attack of the Crab Monsters, Rock All Night etc.), usually in small roles, and became part of the stock company that included Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze. His most prominent and enduring role for Corman -- and his personal favorite -- was that of Gravis Mushnik in the original 1960 non-musical version of Little Shop Of Horrors. During the '60s, Welles began directing low budget films such as the crime thriller Code of Silence (1960) and the horror film Lady Frankenstein (1972). By the 1980's, Welles had come to appreciate the admiration lavished on his work by his former teenage fans at conventions and in books -- he appreciated the outpourings of approval for his acting, in cult movies that came to be described and categorized as "psychotronic," though he was also somewhat embarrassed by the seriousness with which modern audiences embraced his beat poetry parodies in High School Confidential (and which, much to his puzzlement, recently surfaced on a compact-disc collection of actual Beat poetry). He had also resumed acting in the 1980s, including occasional voice-over work. Welles died of heart failure in 2005, at the age of 81.

Trivia: Greco-American actor Nico Minardos inaugurated his film career in 1955. Many of his earlier assignments were unstressed minor roles like "Ali" in the Errol Flynn starrer Istanbul (1956). His larger parts include Carlos, potential "Latin Lover" to tourists Jill St. John and Carol Lynley, in Holiday For Lovers (1959), and hard-bitten westerner DeLeon in Day of the Evil Gun (1968). Nico Minardo's last film was 1975's Assault on Agathan, which he also produced.

Trivia: One of the most popular, and recognizable, character actors in B-Western history, pudgy, mustachioed Bud Osborne (real name Leonard Miles Osborne) was one of the many Wild West show performers who parlayed their experiences into lengthy screen careers. Especially noted for his handling of runaway stagecoaches and buckboards, Osborne began as a stunt performer with Thomas Ince's King-Bee company around 1912, and by the 1920s he had become one of the busiest supporting players in the business. Rather rakish-looking in his earlier years, the still slender Osborne even attempted to become a Western star in his own right. Produced by the Bud Osborne Feature Film Company and released by low-budget Truart Pictures, The Prairie Mystery (1922) presented Osborne as a romantic leading man opposite B-movie regular Pauline Curley. Few saw this little clunker, however, and Osborne quickly returned to the ranks of supporting cowboys, often portraying despicable villains with names like Satan Saunders, Piute Sam, or Bull McKee. Playing an escaped convict masquerading as a circuit rider in both the 1923 Leo Maloney short Double Cinched and Shootin' Square, a 1924 Jack Perrin feature Western, Osborne even demonstrated an affinity for comedy. The now veteran Bud Osborne continued his screen career into the sound era and became even busier in the 1930s and 1940s. As he grew older and his waistline expanded, Osborne's roles became somewhat smaller and instead of calling the shots himself, as he often had in the silent era, he now answered to the likes of Roy Barcroft and Charles King. But he seems to pop up in every other B-Western and serial released in those years, appearing in more than 65 productions for Republic Pictures alone. By the 1950s, the now elderly Osborne became one of the many veteran performers courted by maverick filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr., for whom he did Crossroad Avenger: The Adventures of the Tucson Kid (1954), an unsold television pilot, Jailbait (1954), Bride of the Monster (1955), and Night of the Ghouls (1958). When all is said and done, it was a rather dismal finish to a colorful career.