Trivia: Leading man Robert Lowery came to Hollywood on the strength of his talent as a band vocalist. He was signed to a movie contract in 1937 by 20th Century-Fox, a studio that seemed to take a wicked delight in shuttling its male contractees from bits to second leads to bits again. Freelancing from 1942 onward, Lowery starred in a few low-budget films at Universal and Monogram. In 1949, he portrayed the Caped Crusader in the Columbia serial Batman and Robin. On television, Robert Lowery co-starred as Big Tim Champion on the kiddie series Circus Boy (1956-1958), and played smooth-talking villain Buss Courtney on the Anne Sheridan sitcom Pistols and Petticoats (1967).

Trivia: Blessed with a mellifluous speaking voice, Marvin Miller went into radio straight out of college; he appeared in more West Coast-based network programs than can possibly be catalogued here. In films, the heavyset Miller was often cast as a villain, usually oriental (e.g., Blood on the Sun). He is perhaps best remembered by mystery buffs as crime boss Morris Carnovsky's sadistic henchman in the 1947 Humphrey Bogart vehicle Dead Reckoning. Miller continued as both a seen and unseen actor into the 1970s, recording several long-playing albums in which he read classic poetry and literature, and providing voice-overs for the cartoon output of the Disney and UPA studios. Miller's best-known TV role was as Michael Anthony, secretary to the "late, fabulously wealthy John Beresford Tipton" on TV's The Millionaire. From 1955 through 1960, Miller, as Anthony, handed out one million-dollar check per week to unsuspecting fictional recipients; the series brought Miller headaches as well as stardom, inasmuch as he was bombarded with thousands of requests from real-life millionaire wannabes who had trouble separating fact from fiction. Like his voice-artist colleague, Paul Frees (who was the voice of Millionaire's John Beresford Tipton), Marvin Miller eventually grew very rich -- and very corpulent -- on residuals for his extensive TV and commercial work.

Trivia: American actor Jackie Coogan belonged to a family of vaudevillians. At age four Coogan was already a stage attraction performing with his father when he caught the eye of Charles Chaplin, who immediately hired him (and his father as well). After giving him a bit part in the short A Day's Pleasure (1919), he made Coogan his co-star in the masterpiece The Kid (1921). This launched Coogan's film career and he went on to become one of the highest paid film actors of the day. Movie audiences worldwide doted on him, but his career as a child star petered out when he was 13 and too old to be "cute." In 1935 when his mother and stepfather refused to let him have the $4 million that he had amassed during his child acting days, he filed suit against them. When the settlement finally came, he received a mere $126,000., but the legal fight brought attention to such abuses, and resulted in the "California Child Actor's Bill" also known as the "Coogan Act" which protected the earnings of child actors. He was married to Betty Grable for 3 years, and to three other showgirls in succession afterwards. During his adulthood, he occasionally appeared in films playing character roles and worked frequently in television, most notably as Uncle Fester in The Addams Family TV series. He died on March 1, 1984.

Trivia: Based in Los Angeles from an early age, Tommy Cook was a busy child actor on radio during the 1940s, playing such roles as Little Beaver on the Western series Red Ryder. In films since 1942's The Tuttles of Tahiti, Cook was briefly placed under contract by Columbia. In his late teen years, he signed with 20th Century Fox, playing substantial roles in films like An American Guerilla in the Philippines (1950) and Panic in the Streets (1950). Drifting out of acting in the mid-'50s, Tommy Cook went on to become a professional tennis player and traveling-show entrepreneur.

Trivia: The third oldest of the original "Dead End Kids," Gabriel Dell was the only member of that group to enjoy a truly successful solo career. As a reward for his academic achievements, young Dell was permitted to enter New York's Professional Children's School, with his Italian-immigrant father paying his tuition. His first Broadway play was Sidney Kingsley's Dead End, in which he played the sickly street punk "T.B." Together with his Dead End co-stars Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan and Bernard Punsley, Dell was brought to Hollywood for the 1937 film version of the Kingsley play. This led to several other appearances with the Dead End Kids in such Warner Bros. productions as Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) and They Made Me a Criminal (1939). He also worked with two of the "Kid's" splinter groups, the Little Tough Guys and the East Side Kids. Unlike his cohorts Gorcey and Hall, Dell's character changed from picture to picture. After serving in World War II, Dell rejoined his old cinematic gang, now renamed The Bowery Boys. As "Gabe Moreno," Dell generally played the most mature member of the bunch, often a law enforcement officer or crusading reporter. Tired of playing third fiddle to Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall, Dell quit the Bowery Boys cold in 1950, accepting a role in the Broadway Revue Tickets Please. Deciding to learn to be a "real" actor rather than an overgrown juvenile, Dell studied at the Actors' Studio and took dancing lessons. In the late 1950s, Dell achieved fame as a supporting comedian on The Steve Allen Show, participating in comic sketches with the likes of Tom Poston, Don Knotts, Dayton Allen and Bill Dana. During this period, he developed his famous Bela Lugosi impression, which he'd later repeat in nightclub appearances and on the best-selling record album Famous Movie Monsters Speak. Dell's Broadway career thrived in the 1960s, with well-received appearances in such plays as The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, Luv and Adaptation. Dell's post-Bowery Boy film appearances included Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971) and a starring role in the The Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery (1975). A prolific TV guest star, Gabe Dell was starred in the 1972 sitcom The Corner Bar, and five years later was cast as the son of the Devil (Mickey Rooney) in Norman Lear's short-lived comedy-fantasy A Year at the Top.

Trivia: American light leading man James Ellison was recruited from a stock company to appear in the forgotten 1932 film Play Girl. His biggest movie break was DeMille's The Plainsman (1936), in which he played Buffalo Bill Cody opposite Gary Cooper's Wild Bill Hickok and Jean Arthur's Calamity Jane. This sagebrush endeavor led to two seasons' work as "Johnny Nelson" in Paramount's Hopalong Cassidy western programmers. Ellison was one of the stalwarts of the "B" units at 20th Century-Fox and RKO during the 1940s; thereafter he free-lanced in such cost-conscious second features as Dead Man's Trail (1952) and Ghost Town (1956). After starring in the negligible 1963 Castro spoof When The Girls Take Over, James Ellison decided that the time was ripe to leave show business in favor of the lucrative world of real estate.