Trivia: Emerging into the public's consciousness in 1958, country & western performer Johnny Cash hit his first popularity peak in the mid-'60s with his hard-driving prison, train, and "underdog" ballads. Changing tastes, coupled with his own volatile temperament, resulted in as many lows as highs in the late 20th century, but Cash is a survivor, and was still very much on hand for the country & western upsurge of the late '80s. His first film appearances were in shapeless semi-concert pictures like Hootenanny Hoot (1963), but he went on to excel as a naturalistic actor in such Westerns as A Gunfight (1971) and The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James (1986). Johnny Cash is shown to best cinematic advantage as "himself" in the 1970 documentary Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music, which features Cash's wife, June Carter. Cash was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from Lincoln Center in 1997.Still hugely popular as the millennuim turned, the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards found Cash's video for the song "Hurt" nominated for no less than six awards. The reflective video ultimately took home the prize for Best Cinematography, cementing Cash's status as an artist whose musical stylings truly knew no boundries. Shortly thereafter, in early September of 2003, Johnny Cash died of complications of diabetes in Nashville, TN. at the age of 71. His death came just four short months after that of his longtime wife June Carter Cash.

Trivia: Like so many others before him, Kris Kristofferson pursued Hollywood success after first finding fame in the pop music arena. Unlike the vast majority of his contemporaries, however, he could truly act as well as make music, delivering superb, natural performances in films for directors like Martin Scorsese, Sam Peckinpah, and John Sayles. Born June 22, 1936, in Brownsville, TX, Kristofferson was a Phi Beta Kappa at Pomona College, earning a degree in creative writing. At Oxford, he was a Rhodes Scholar, and while in Britain he first performed his music professionally (under the name Kris Carson). A five-year tour in the army followed, as did a stint teaching at West Point. Upon exiting the military, he drifted around the country before settling in Nashville, where he began earning a reputation as a gifted singer and songwriter. After a number of his compositions were covered by Roger Miller, Kristofferson eventually emerged as one of the most sought-after writers in music. In 1970, Johnny Cash scored a Number One hit with Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down," and that same year he released his debut LP, Kristofferson. Upon composing two more hits, Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee" and Sammi Smith's "Help Me Make It Through the Night," Kristofferson was a star in both pop and country music. In 1971, his friend, Dennis Hopper, asked him to write the soundtrack for The Last Movie, and soon Kristofferson was even appearing onscreen as himself. He next starred -- as a pop singer, appropriately enough -- opposite Gene Hackman later that year in Cisco Pike, again composing the film's music as well. Another role as a musician in 1973's Blume in Love threatened to typecast him, but then Kristofferson starred as the titular outlaw in Sam Peckinpah's superb Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. For Peckinpah, Kristofferson also appeared in 1974's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, followed by a breakthrough performance opposite Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese's acclaimed Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. After a two-year hiatus to re-focus his attentions on music, he followed with a villainous turn in the little-seen Vigilante Force and the much-hyped The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea. Amid reports of a serious drinking problem, Kristofferson next starred as an aging, alcoholic rocker opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 remake of A Star Is Born, an experience so grueling, and which hit so close to home, that he later claimed the picture forced him to go on the wagon. In 1977, Kristofferson teamed with Burt Reynolds to star in the football comedy Semi-Tough, another hit. He next reunited with Peckinpah for 1978's Convoy. Hanover Street was scheduled to follow, but at the last minute Kristofferson dropped out to mount a concert tour. Instead, he next appeared with Muhammad Ali in the 1979 television miniseries Freedom Road. He then starred in Michael Cimino's legendary 1981 disaster Heaven's Gate, and when the follow-up -- Alan J. Pakula's Rollover -- also failed, Kristofferson's film career was seriously crippled; he received no more offers for three years, appearing only in a TV feature, 1983's The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck, and performing his music. His comeback vehicle, the 1984 thriller Flashpoint, earned little attention, but Alan Rudolph's Songwriter -- also starring Willie Nelson -- was well received. In 1986, Kristofferson reunited with Rudolph for Trouble in Mind, and starred in three TV movies: The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James, Blood and Orchids, and a remake of John Ford's Stagecoach.Remaining on television, Kristofferson co-starred in the epic 1987 miniseries Amerika. The year following, he appeared in a pair of Westerns, The Tracker and Dead or Alive, and unexpectedly co-starred in the comedy Big-Top Pee-Wee. The 1989 sci-fi disappointment Millennium was his last major theatrical appearance for some years. In the early '90s, the majority of his work was either in television (the Pair of Aces films, Christmas in Connecticut) or direct-to-video fare (Night of the Cyclone, Original Intent). In many quarters, Kristofferson was largely a memory by the middle of the decade, but in 1995 he enjoyed a major renaissance; first, he released A Moment of Forever, his first album of new material in many years, then co-starred in Pharoah's Army, an acclaimed art-house offering set during the Civil War. The following year, Kristofferson delivered his most impressive performance as a murderous Texas sheriff in John Sayles' Lone Star. He turned in another stellar performance two years later in James Ivory's A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries. After a turn in the Mel Gibson vehicle Payback and Father Damien, Kristofferson again collaborated with Sayles, playing a pilot of dubious reputation in 1999's Limbo. In the decades to come, Kristofferson would remain active on screen, appearing in movies like He's Just Not That Into You, Fastfood Nation, and Dolphin Tale.

Trivia: Texas born-and-bred musical legend Willie Nelson cracked into showbiz as a disc jockey in Fort Worth. He went on to join the Ray Price band, writing tunes for Price as well as a slew of other artists (Nelson's the man who penned Patsy Cline's signature tune "Crazy"). Fronting his own group, The Outlaws, Nelson played the tanktown and honky-tonk circuit before scoring with his 1975 hit "Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain." In 1979, he made a laudable film debut as Robert Redford's sidekick in The Electric Horseman; one year later, he starred in the C&W "Intermezzo" clone Honeysuckle Rose (1980), for which he also wrote the score, including the chartbuster "On the Road Again." Nelson's acting resumé includes several made-for-TV westerns, among them 1990's A Pair of Aces and its 1992 sequel, and a 1987 remake of Stagecoach; he also appeared as "himself"--and a very weather-beaten self it was--in a 1995 TV-movie biopic of country star Dottie West. Nelson has been awarded five Grammy Awards, and in the early 1980s he organized the annual Farm Aid Benefit, which earned him a Special Humanitarian Award.

Trivia: Country-western star, onscreen from 1966.

Trivia: In order to land the part of Bo Duke in the TV series The Dukes of Hazzard, John Schneider adopted a Cracker dialect and shambling good-ole-boy manner, claiming that he hailed from the tiny -- and fictional -- community of Snailville, Georgia. In fact, Schneider was born in Upstate New York, and was raised in Atlanta by his mom. During his teen years, Schneider picked up spending money by working as an entertainer at parties and public events, playing the guitar, telling jokes and performing a magic trick or two. He briefly attended the Georgia School of High Performance, hoping to become a race-car driver. His prowess behind the wheel enabled him to land his Dukes of Hazzard job, which he held down from 1979 to 1985, save for a brief 1982 walkout due to contract dispute. Schneider's Hazzard success allowed him to have both a recording career as a country music artist, and an ongoing presence on the small screen. In addition to numerous made-for-TV movies, he had a recurring role on the popular program Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Schneider gained a whole new legion of fans as the Earth father of Superman when he began playing Jonathan Kent on the teen-oriented superhero series Smallville in 2001. He returned to the big screen with a starring role in 2006's Collier & Co., which he also directed. He would also appear in movies like Super Shark and on the TV series Hero Factory. In 2013, he took a starring role in The Haves and Have Nots, a sopa opera created by Tyler Perry.

Trivia: A graduate of Louisiana State University and New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, Elizabeth Ashley started her professional career as a model and ballet dancer (she had studied with Tatiana Semenova). Ashley was still travelling under her given name of Elizabeth Cole when she made her 1959 Broadway bow in The Highest Tree. She first adopted the billing of "Ashley" for her 1961 breakthrough stage appearance in Take Her, She's Mine, which won her the Theatre World Award. Ashley followed this triumph with her performance as newlywed Corrie Bratter in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1963). She made her film debut as Monica Winthrop in The Carpetbaggers (1963), co-starring with then-husband George Peppard (she had previously been married to actor James Farentino). After the 1965 film Ship of Fools, Ashley dropped out of acting for five years. In her candid 1978 autobiography Actress: Postcards From the Road, she attributed her career hiatus to a number of mitigating circumstances: a bout with cancer, a difficult pregnancy, her increasingly unhappy marriage to Peppard, and a professional "freeze-out" because she'd turned down the film version of Barefoot in the Park. By the time she reactivated her career in 1970, Ashley's performances had taken on a harsh, dangerous edge -- which, in the long run, had a most salutary effect on her career. With her searing portrayal of Maggie in the 1974 Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, her comeback was complete. A busier-than-ever character actress in films and on stage, Elizabeth Ashley was also seen on a semiweekly basis as husky-voiced Aunt Frieda on the TV sitcom Evening Shade (1990-1994), which starred fellow Floridian Burt Reynolds.

Trivia: The wife of legendary country musician Johnny Cash and a respected artist in her own right, June Carter Cash proved to be not only a pivotal figure in country music history but also a woman of many diverse talents. Born Valerie June Carter in Maces Springs, VA, the future starlet's mother was none other than Carter Family matriarch Maybelle Carter. As fate would have it, young Carter Cash took an immediate shine to the Autoharp when her mother began teaching her to play at an early age. Although the Carter Family would eventually disband, Maybelle would team with daughters June (on the Autoharp), Helen, and Anita in the late '50s to form the popular country quartet Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters. A natural beauty who possessed a razor sharp wit, Carter Cash soon became popular for spicing up the live performances with comedy routines and monologues. Married to first husband Carl Smith in 1952, the couple performed together at the Grand Ole Opry and had a daughter, Rebecca (who later recorded under the name Carlene Carter), before separating later in the decade. Subsequently managed by Colonel Tom Parker and touring with Elvis Presley, Carter Cash embarked on a brief marriage to Nashville police officer Rip Nix (with whom she had another daughter) before deciding to try her luck with acting. Heading to New York to study under the tutelage of Elia Kazan (who had previously been spellbound by her live performance while scouting locations in Tennessee), the youthful country starlet was soon appearing in such television series as Gunsmoke and The Adventures of Jim Bowie in the '50s, and later had a recurring role in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman during the '90s. In addition to appearances on the long-running TV soap operas The Secret Storm and The Edge of Night, Carter Cash's feature roles included Country Music Holiday (1958), The Gospel Road (1973), and That's Country (1977). In 1997, she essayed the role of a southern preacher's mother in Robert Duvall's The Apostle. Turning down an offer to appear on a variety show in favor of touring with Johnny Cash in 1961, their relationship soon blossomed into more than a professional one, and, in 1968, Johnny proposed to June on-stage in London, Ontario. Much more than just a wife to the country legend, the duo frequently toured together and June co-wrote (with Merle Kilgore) Cash's hit "Ring of Fire" (reportedly about her falling in love with him), and helped him write such enduring songs as, "Long-Legged Guitar Pickin' Man," and "Jackson" (which earned the duo a Grammy). Johnny Cash also frequently credited his wife as a key figure in helping him to shake drug addiction and pull his life together. As a solo artist, Carter Cash released the albums Press On (A 1999 Grammy winner for Best Traditional Folk Album) and Wildwood Flower (2003). Two months after its release, June Carter Cash died suddenly on May 15, 2003, in Nashville as a result of complications from heart surgery. She was 73.

Trivia: The youngest child of actor/singer Bing Crosby and his second wife Kathryn Grant, Mary Crosby made her first professional appearances in the company of her siblings in Bing's Christmas-season TV specials of the 1960s and 1970s. As an adult actress, Mary seemed determined, either by accident or design, to go against the grain of the "wholesome" image perpetrated by her father. As the whole world knows, it was Mary Crosby who, in the guise of "Kristin Shepard," shot J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) in that fateful 1980 episode of TV's Dallas.

Trivia: British entertainer Anthony Newley began as a child star, passing for 10 or 11 even as the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist (1948), when in fact he was already of driving and shaving age. As a young leading man, Newley learned the ins and outs of self-promotion, chiefly the ability to convince the populace that he could do anything well. In 1959, he became a pop recording star thanks to his singing appearance in Idle on Parade, but this was only the beginning. Stop the World, I Want to Get Off was cowritten by Newley and Leslie Bricusse, but to the world at large Anthony Newley, who also starred in the play, was the whole show. This 1961 London-to-Broadway musical was a superbly written piece and a success. Newley followed up this production with another stage collaboration with Bricusse, 1965's The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd, this time sharing the spotlight (but not without a struggle) with veteran Cyril Ritchard. Few people can remember the plotlines of either of Newley's musical plays, but such song standards as "What Kind of Fool Am I," "Gonna Build a Mountain," "Look at That Face" and "Where Would You Be?" have become audition standards. Newley's overwhelming stage presence didn't translate that well to films, with Dr. Doolittle being the most obvious example of this (it is said that Newley and co-star Samantha Eggar kidded around on the set so much that Rex "Dr. Doolittle" Harrison had to resoundingly insist upon professional decorum). Since Doolittle, Newley has been content to merely write songs for other people's movies, occasionally stepping before the camera in such pictures as Mr. Quilp (1975) and It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time (1976). And in 1969, Anthony Newley directed his then-wife Joan Collins in Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness, a woebegone attempt at "hip" which gained fame only through the embarrassed co-starring stints from Milton Berle and George Jessel, and the fact that many American newspapers refused (probably at the request of studio publicity flacks) to mention the film's slightly licentious title in their movie listings.

Trivia: Anthony Franciosa burst onto the scene (after several years' servitude in bit parts) in the 1955 drug-addiction play A Hatful of Rain. He was brought to Hollywood to recreate his stage role in Rain-- winning an Oscar nomination for his part--but his first film appearance was as a taciturn nightclub owner in the MGM comedy This Could Be the Night. From 1957 through 1963, Franciosa essayed a number of hot-headed screen characterizations, including the role of tempestuous artist Francisco Goya in The Naked Maja (1960). Sensing he needed an image change in 1963, Franciosa changed his screen billing to the lighter "Tony Franciosa" and signed on as star of the frothy TV sitcom Valentine's Day (1964). Franciosa has since successfully juggled a film career with such weekly video series as The Name of the Game (1969-71), Search (1972), Matt Helm (1975), and Finder of Lost Loves (1984). From 1957-60 Tony Franciosa was married to actress Shelley Winters.

Trivia: A former hairdresser, Al LaRue first tried to break into movies during the war years but failed to get past the casting directors, most of whom felt that he looked too much like Humphrey Bogart to suit their tastes. Refusing to give up, LaRue had by 1945 picked up quite a few supporting bad-guy roles. He began showing up in secondary parts in the Eddie Dean westerns at PRC studios; on the strength of his voluminous fan mail, he was elevated to his own starring series in 1946. Billed as "Lash" LaRue in honor of his skill with a 15-foot bullwhip, the actor played a black-clad do-gooder named Cheyenne, while his comic sidekick was the ubiquitous Al "Fuzzy" St. John. In 1951, LaRue headlined the 15-minute TV series Lash of the West, in which he would introduce and narrate clips from his earlier films. At that time, La Rue began showing signs of a drinking problem. By the late '50s, it was compounded by other legal problems, including an accusation of theft (he was acquitted), an arrest for vagrancy, drug possession and abuse, and other small crimes and misdemeanors. He claimed to have been married 10 ten times and paying his wives and for his legal problems left him impoverished. Resurfacing in 1972, the destitute LaRue accepted the lead in a porno western, Hard on the Trail (even though he didn't participate in the sex scenes, the film would remain a source of shame and embarrassment for him). Late in life, Al "Lash" LaRue emerged as an evangelist on the rodeo and country-music circuit; he also became a popular guest speaker at western and nostalgia conventions. La Rue made his final film appearances in two sci-fi westerns Dark Power (1984) and Alien Outlaw (1985). He also made a cameo appearance in the terrible made-for-television remake of John Ford's Stagecoach (1986).

Trivia: Sonny Carl Davis came to the movies from an earlier stint on the music scene in Austin, TX. His rock group, Sons of Coyote, appeared for a time in the 1970s before metamorphosing into the Sons of Uranium Savage. His entertainment career took an upward turn when director Eagle Pennell cast him as one of the two lead characters in the offbeat film The Whole Shootin' Match (1979). Thus began the actor's career of making memorable portrayals of the diverse character parts assigned to him. After playing a redneck entrepreneur in The Whole Shootin' Match, Davis performed in one more Pennell film. Turning in one of his most outstanding performances, Davis played the aging Don Juan character in Last Night at the Alamo (1983). One of the great scenes in film occurs when the handsome, suave, pick-up artist removes his cowboy hat only to reveal a balding head. The change in persona is so great that audiences gasped out loud at the contrast.Davis is perhaps best known for his portrayal of the businessman with attitude in the highly acclaimed film Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), in which Davis set the benchmark for how to make yourself heard at a fast-food restaurant. Davis also starred as Louise's restaurant co-worker in Thelma & Louise (1991).Throughout the '80s and '90s, Davis appeared in dramas and comedies in the theaters as well as made-for-television movies, often turning in performances that deserved a wider audience than these limited vehicles gave him. Notable among these were his portrayals in Nowhere to Run (1988); A Pair of Aces (1990); Bad Channels, Seedpeople, and Ned Blessing, all made in 1992; and Fair Game in 1995. Davis' next performances included his 2001 portrayal of a Santa Claus at the wrong place at the wrong time, in I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus; and in Big Time, made the same year.