Trivia: While still a high-school student, Richard Long was selected to play the son of Claudette Colbert in 1946's Tomorrow is Forever. A subsequent supporting role as Loretta Young's brother in the Orson Welles-directed The Stranger proved that Long had talent as well as looks, and that his good showing in the Colbert picture had not been a fluke. Despite a good start, Long's film career had waned by the mid-1950s. He finally gained stardom on television, notably on the various series produced by Warner Bros. between 1957 and 1963. Long played Gentleman Jack Darby on Maverick and detective Rex Randolph on Bourbon Street Beat; he carried over the "Randolph" character into 77 Sunset Strip, starting with the 1960-61 season. Later TV starring stints for Richard Long included The Big Valley (1965-69) as frontier attorney Jarrod Barkley, and Nanny and the Professor (70-71), as guess which of the two title characters. Richard Long died of a heart ailment at the age of 47.

Trivia: Van Williams is best remembered for having played the title role in the 20th Century Fox television series The Green Hornet (1966-1967). At the end of the 1950s, he was one of the more promising leading men signed by Warner Bros.' television division. In a group that included Troy Donahue, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, and Roger Smith, Williams probably had the strangest route to being discovered. Born in Fort Worth, TX, to a cattle-ranching family, he graduated from Texas Christian University and became a professional diver based in Hawaii. He was earning extra money working at industrialist Henry J. Kaiser's Hawaiian Village, and happened to be teaching two of Kaiser's guests -- producer Mike Todd and his wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor -- how to dive, when Todd suggested that the 23-year-old Williams go for a screen test. The producer was killed in a plane crash before the screen test could be done, but Williams still managed to get his shot at an acting career, on the small screen, with help from actress Lurene Tuttle after he arrived in Hollywood. At her urging, he took speech and drama lessons and was ready when a spot opened up in a television production starring Ronald Reagan. A small role followed, and then a contract with Warner Bros. television -- after playing a guest role in an episode of the series Lawman, Williams was cast in the detective series Bourbon Street Beat, set in New Orleans, which wasn't successful. This was followed, however, by Surfside 6, a similar series about private investigators set in Miami, FL, which ended up running for four seasons and took full advantage of Williams' good looks and muscular build. Williams followed it up with a supporting role in The Tycoon, a comedy series starring Walter Brennan and Jerome Cowan, which lasted for only one season -- he had little to do in that program, alas, except play it straight to Brennan's cantankerous multi-millionaire senior citizen, for whom his character worked. Following the cancellation of The Tycoon, Williams was up for the role of a submarine commander in a proposed World War II action series, Pursuit and Destroy, that never made it into production. Instead, he took the role with which he has been most identified for more than 30 years, Britt Reid (aka the Green Hornet) in the 1966-1967 ABC series The Green Hornet. The program ran for only one season, but developed a strong cult following, largely due to the presence of Williams' co-star, Bruce Lee, who dazzled audiences every week with his exhibitions of martial arts skills. Williams had the bad fortune to be caught playing a dual role that didn't really constitute a complete character between them. His portrayal of Britt Reid suffered from the limited time that the character was on the screen, while he was, in turn, limited in what he could do as an actor playing the Green Hornet, who had to remain a man of mystery to those around him. One actually knew more, in terms of background and interior emotional life, about Lee's Kato than one did about Williams' Britt Reid/the Green Hornet. Following the cancellation of the series, Williams made some guest appearances on shows such as Mannix and The Big Valley, and sitcoms like Nanny & The Professor. The best performance of his whole career, however, was probably in the 1974 Gunsmoke episode "Thirty a Month and Found," which garnered strong critical praise on its original airing. Williams obviously found some favor with Gunsmoke star James Arness, because he played in three episodes of Arness' later series How the West Was Won. His last attempt at a series of his own came in 1975 with Westwind, but during the 1980s, as his acting career slowed, he took on numerous outside business interests, including cattle ranches in Texas, Idaho, and Hawaii. He still made a rare foray or two back into television, most notably in "Love Is the Word," a 1979 episode of The Rockford Files, starring his old Warner Bros. stablemate James Garner. He has also served as an auxiliary volunteer for the Los Angeles County Sheriffs' Department. Because of the association of The Green Hornet with Lee's memory, and the reissue of several episodes of the show in edited form on DVD, Williams remains a fondly remembered leading man from 1960s television. Williams died in 2016, at age 82.

Trivia: Japanese actor Mako, born Makoto Iwamatsu, has spent most of his professional career in the United States. His first important film appearance was as Po-Han, Steve McQueen's assistant machinist, in The Sand Pebbles (1966), a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. He remained in films into the 1990s, playing choice character parts in such films as Hawaiians (1967), Conan the Destroyer (1984), and Rising Sun (1993). Mako's TV credits include the role of Major Oshira on the weekly Hawaiian Heat (1984) and the 1990 TV movie Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes.

Trivia: Heavyweight American actor Robert Middleton trained for a musical career at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and Carnegie Tech. His deep, booming voice enabled Middleton to secure steady work as a radio actor and announcer. After appearing on Broadway in Ondine and in several live TV dramas, Middleton entered films in 1954. He was most effectively cast as burly, bullying villains, notably the sadistic prison escapee Dobish in The Desperate Hours (1955) and "grim and grisly Griswold" in Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1956). That he could leaven his skullduggery with humor was proven in his many appearances on the Jackie Gleason shows of the mid-'50s as Ralph Kramden's boss, Mr. Marshall. Television continued to make good use of Middleton's talents into the 1960s; there was hardly a Western series in existence which didn't at least once feature the massive actor as a brutish mountain patriarch, smirking town boss, or grim-faced lynch mob leader. Shortly before his death in 1977, Robert Middleton was featured as inordinately sinister Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in the speculative feature The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977).

Trivia: In an industry of prima donnas, actress Barbara Stanwyck was universally recognized as a consummate professional; a supremely versatile performer, her strong screen presence established her as a favorite of directors, including Cecil B. De Mille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra. Born Ruby Stevens July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, NY, she was left orphaned at the age of four and raised by her showgirl sister. Upon quitting school a decade later, she began dancing in local speakeasies and at the age of 15 became a Ziegfeld chorus girl. In 1926, Stanwyck made her Broadway debut in The Noose, becoming a major stage star in her next production, Burlesque. MGM requested a screen test, but she rejected the offer. She did, however, agree to a supporting role in 1927's Broadway Nights, and after completing her stage run in 1929 appeared in the drama The Locked Door. With her husband, comedian Frank Fay, Stanwyck traveled to Hollywood. After unsuccessfully testing at Warner Bros., she appeared in Columbia's low-budget Mexicali Rose, followed in 1930 by Capra's Ladies of Leisure, the picture which shot her to stardom. A long-term Columbia contract was the result, and the studio soon loaned Stanwyck to Warners for 1931's Illicit. It was a hit, as was the follow-up Ten Cents a Dance. Reviewers were quite taken with her, and with a series of successful pictures under her belt, she sued Columbia for a bigger salary; a deal was struck to share her with Warners, and she split her time between the two studios for pictures including Miracle Woman, Night Nurse, and Forbidden, a major hit which established her among the most popular actresses in Hollywood. Over the course of films like 1932's Shopworn, Ladies They Talk About, and Baby Face, Stanwyck developed an image as a working girl, tough-minded and often amoral, rarely meeting a happy ending; melodramas including 1934's Gambling Lady and the following year's The Woman in Red further established the persona, and in Red Salute she even appeared as a student flirting with communism. Signing with RKO, Stanwyck starred as Annie Oakley; however, her contract with the studio was non-exclusive, and she also entered into a series of multi-picture deals with the likes of Fox (1936's A Message to Garcia) and MGM (His Brother's Wife, co-starring Robert Taylor, whom she later married).For 1937's Stella Dallas, Stanwyck scored the first of four Academy Award nominations. Refusing to be typecast, she then starred in a screwball comedy, Breakfast for Two, followed respectively by the downcast 1938 drama Always Goodbye and the caper comedy The Mad Miss Manton. After the 1939 De Mille Western Union Pacific, she co-starred with William Holden in Golden Boy, and with Henry Fonda she starred in Preston Sturges' outstanding The Lady Eve. For the 1941 Howard Hawks comedy Ball of Fire, Stanwyck earned her second Oscar nomination. Another superior film, Capra's Meet John Doe, completed a very successful year. Drama was the order of the day for the next few years, as she starred in pictures like The Gay Sisters and The Great Man's Lady. In 1944, she delivered perhaps her most stunning performance in Billy Wilder's classic noir Double Indemnity. Stanwyck's stunning turn as a femme fatale secured her a third Oscar bid and helped make her, according to the IRS, the highest-paid woman in America. It also won her roles in several of the decade's other great film noirs, including 1946's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and 1949's The File on Thelma Jordon. In between, Stanwyck also starred in the 1948 thriller Sorry, Wrong Number, her final Academy Award-nominated performance. The 1950s, however, were far less kind, and strong roles came her way with increasing rarity. With Anthony Mann she made The Furies and with Lang she appeared opposite Marilyn Monroe in 1952's Clash by Night, but much of her material found her typecast -- in 1953's All I Desire, she portrayed a heartbroken mother not far removed from the far superior Stella Dallas, while in 1954's Blowing Wild she was yet another tough-as-nails, independent woman. Outside of the all-star Executive Suite, Stanwyck did not appear in another major hit; she let her hair go gray, further reducing her chances of winning plum parts, and found herself cast in a series of low-budget Westerns. Only Samuel Fuller's 1957 picture Forty Guns, a film much revered by the Cahiers du Cinema staff, was of any particular notice. It was also her last film for five years. In 1960, she turned to television to host The Barbara Stanwyck Show, winning an Emmy for her work.Stanwyck returned to cinemas in 1962, portraying a lesbian madam in the controversial Walk on the Wild Side. Two years later, she co-starred with Elvis Presley in Roustabout. That same year, she appeared in the thriller The Night Walker, and with that, her feature career was over. After rejecting a role in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, she returned to television to star in the long-running Western series The Big Valley, earning another Emmy for her performance as the matriarch of a frontier family. Upon the show's conclusion, Stanwyck made a TV movie, The House That Would Not Die. She then appeared in two more, 1971's A Taste of Evil and 1973's The Letters, before vanishing from the public eye for the remainder of the decade. In 1981, she was awarded an honorary Oscar; two years later, she was also the recipient of a Lincoln Center Life Achievement Award. Also in 1983, Stanwyck returned to television to co-star in the popular miniseries The Thorn Birds. Two years later, she headlined The Colbys, a spin-off of the hugely successful nighttime soap opera Dynasty. It was her last project before retiring. Stanwyck died January 20, 1990.

Trivia: A football star at Eastern Kentucky State College, Lee Majors came to Los Angeles armed with a physical education degree and possessed with a vague desire to break into films. He worked as a park recreation director for the City of Los Angeles before entering show business in 1963. Majors was promoted as "the New James Dean," though he personally aspired to become a new Steve McQueen or Paul Newman (he also retained his permit to work as a recreation director, just in case the world wasn't holding its breath for a new Dean, McQueen or Newman). Majors achieved stardom on his own merits in a variety of television series, the most recent of which was 1992's Raven. His best-known TV roles included Heath Barkley on The Big Valley (1965-69), bionic Steve Austin on The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-78) and stunt man Colt Seavers on The Fall Guy (1981-86). In addition, he has headlined a number of made-for-TV movies, essaying the old Gary Cooper part in the 1991 sequel to High Noon and portraying U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in a 1976 biopic. Majors would continue to act in the decades to come, memorably appearing in Big Fat Liar and on The Game. For several years, Lee Majors was married to actress Farrah Fawcett.

Trivia: Not to be confused with the 1940s bit player of the same name, American leading man Peter Breck was the son of a bandleader. Majoring in drama and minoring in psychology at the University of Houston, Breck went the regional-theater route until selected by Robert Mitchum for a role in Mitchum's Thunder Road (1958). He paid a few further dues on network television, showing up now and then as Doc Holiday on the weekly Western Maverick. In 1959, Breck starred in his own sagebrush series, Black Saddle, in which he played gunslinger-turned-lawyer Clay Culhane. When the series was dropped after one season, he accepted a few low-paying theater assignments, making ends meet with whatever odd jobs came along. His tenacity paid off when, in 1969, Breck was cast as firebrand "number two son" Nick Barkeley on The Big Valley, which ran for four years. A decade later, he appeared in still another Western, playing a megalomaniac miner in the serialized Secret Empire. Peter Breck has devoted considerable time to teaching drama in Vancouver, British Columbia.