Trivia: American actor James Arness had an unremarkable Minneapolis childhood, but his wartime experiences shattered that normality - literally. During the battle of Anzio, Arness' right leg was peppered with machine gun bullets, and when the bones were set they didn't mend properly, leaving him with a slight but permanent limp. The trauma of the experience mellowed into aimlessness after the war. Arness became a "beach bum," lived out of his car, and worked intermittently as a salesman and carpenter. Acting was treated equally lackadaisically, but by 1947 Arness had managed to break into Hollywood on the basis of his rugged good looks and his 6'6" frame. Few of his screen roles were memorable, though one has become an object of cult worship: Arness was cast as the menacingly glowing space alien, described by one character as "an intellectual carrot," in The Thing (1951). For a time it looked as though Arness would continue to flounder in supporting roles, while his younger brother, actor Peter Graves, seemed destined for stardom. John Wayne took a liking to Arness when the latter was cast in Wayne's Big Jim McLain (1953). Wayne took it upon himself to line up work for Arness, becoming one of the withdrawn young actor's few friends. In 1955, Wayne was offered the role of Matt Dillon in the TV version of the popular radio series Gunsmoke. Wayne turned it down but recommended that Arness be cast and even went so far as to introduce him to the nation's viewers in a specially filmed prologue to the first Gunsmoke episode. Truth be told, Arness wasn't any keener than Wayne to be tied down to a weekly series, and as each season ended he'd make noises indicating he planned to leave. This game went on for each of the 20 seasons that Gunsmoke was on the air, the annual result being a bigger salary for Arness, more creative control over the program (it was being produced by his own company within a few years) and a sizeable chunk of the profits and residuals. When Gunsmoke finally left the air in 1975, Arness was the only one of the original four principals (including Amanda Blake, Milburn Stone and Dennis Weaver) still appearing on the series. Arness made plans to take it easy after his two-decade Gunsmoke hitch, but was lured back to the tube for a one-shot TV movie, The Macahans (1976). This evolved into the six-hour miniseries How the West Was Won (1977) which in turn led to a single-season weekly series in 1978. All these incarnations starred Arness, back in the saddle as Zeb Macahan. The actor tried to alter his sagebrush image in a 1981 modern-day cop series, McClain's Law -- which being set in the southwest permitted Arness to ride a horse or two. It appeared, however that James Arness would always be Matt Dillon in the hearts and minds of fans, thus Arness obliged his still-faithful public with three Gunsmoke TV movies, the last one (Gunsmoke: The Last Apache) released in 1992. In between these assignments, James Arness starred in a 1988 TV-movie remake of the 1948 western film classic Red River, in which he filled the role previously played by his friend and mentor John Wayne.

Trivia: Milburn Stone got his start in vaudeville as one-half of the song 'n' snappy patter team of Stone and Strain. He worked with several touring theatrical troupes before settling down in Hollywood in 1935, where he played everything from bits to full leads in the B-picture product ground out by such studios as Mascot and Monogram. One of his few appearances in an A-picture was his uncredited but memorable turn as Stephen A. Douglas in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln. During this period, he was also a regular in the low-budget but popular Tailspin Tommy series. He spent the 1940s at Universal in a vast array of character parts, at one point being cast in a leading role only because he physically matched the actor in the film's stock-footage scenes! Full stardom would elude Stone until 1955, when he was cast as the irascible Doc Adams in Gunsmoke. Milburn Stone went on to win an Emmy for this colorful characterization, retiring from the series in 1972 due to ill health.

Trivia: The son of film star Alan Ladd and Hollywood agent Sue Carol, David Ladd began his career as a sensitive, Brandon DeWilde-type juvenile actor. David was quite impressive in such family-oriented outdoor film fare as The Big Land (1957), The Proud Rebel (1958, co-starring with his father) and Dog of Flanders (1960). As an adult, Ladd was most often seen in secondary character roles. Following the lead of his half-brother Alan Ladd Jr., David became a TV producer, with one theatrical feature The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), to his credit. For several years, David Ladd was married to actress Cheryl Jean Stopelmoor, who retained the professional name of Cheryl Ladd long after the union floundered.

Trivia: Burly character actor Peter Whitney was under contract to Warner Bros. from 1941 to 1945. Whitney spent much of that time on loan-out, playing a variety of moronic thugs and henchmen. His best-ever screen role (or roles) was as identical twin hillbilly murderers Mert and Bert Fleagle in the 1944 screwball classic Murder He Says. He enjoyed a rare romantic lead in the 1946 horror film The Brute Man (the title character was played by Rondo Hatton). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Whitney supported himself by portraying some of TV's most scurrilous and homicidal backwoods villains. Peter Whitney essayed a more comical characterization as rustic free-loader Lafe Crick in several first-season episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies.

Trivia: Whitmore attended Yale, where he joined the Yale Drama School Players and co-founded the Yale radio station. After serving in World War II with the Marines, he did some work in stock and then debuted on Broadway in 1947's Command Decision. He entered films in 1949, going on to play key supporting roles; occasionally, he also played leads. For his work in Battleground (1949), his second film, he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. He starred in the early '60s TV series "The Law and Mr. Jones." He won much acclaim for his work in the one-man stage show Give 'Em Hell, Harry!, in which he played Harry Truman; he reprised the role in the 1975 screen version, for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. After 1980 his screen appearances were infrequent. He is the father of actor James Whitmore Jr.

Trivia: A general purpose performer with slightly more distinction to his face and voice than most of his ilk, American actor Norman Burton quietly entered films in the 1960s. Many of his early films were more artistic than profitable, as witness the experimental Wild Seed (1965). Burton was spotted in brief character parts in a few box-office hits, notably Planet of the Apes (1968) (he was the simian Hunt Leader) and The Towering Inferno (1974) (as Will Giddings). In the James Bond actioner Diamonds are Forever (1970), Burton succeeded Jack Lord, Rik Van Nutter et. al. in the role of Bond's American CIA contact Felix Leiter. On TV's New Adventures of Wonder Woman series of the late 1970s, Burton had the recurring role of Joe Atkinson, the boss of anti-subversive operative Diana Prince (aka Wonder Woman). Still answering casting calls into the 1990s, Norman Burton was one of many film veterans appearing in the zany 1994 biopic Ed Wood.