Trivia: A graduate of Northwestern University, actor James Olson did stage work in and around Chicago before his 1956 film bow in The Sharkfighters. Angular and sandy-haired, Olson was well suited to classical stage roles. In films and on television, it was his lot to portray a long line of understanding husbands, doubting doctors, mystery killers and corporate bigwigs. James Olson garnered some of his best reviews for his performance as Joanne Woodward's autumn romance in Rachel, Rachel (1967), under the direction of Paul Newman.

Trivia: Rough-hewn American leading man Richard Boone was thrust into the cold cruel world when he was expelled from Stanford University, for a minor infraction. He worked as a oil-field laborer, boxer, painter and free-lance writer before settling upon acting as a profession. After serving in World War II, Boone used his GI Bill to finance his theatrical training at the Actors' Studio, making his belated Broadway debut at age 31, playing Jason in Judith Anderson's production of Medea. Signed to a 20th Century-Fox contract in 1951, Boone was given good billing in his first feature, Halls of Montezuma; among his Fox assignments was the brief but telling role of Pontius Pilate in The Robe (1953). Boone launched the TV-star phase of his career in the weekly semi-anthology Medic, playing Dr. Konrad Steiner. From 1957 through 1963, Boone portrayed Paladin, erudite western soldier of fortune, on the popular western series Have Gun, Will Travel. He directed several episodes of this series. Boone tackled a daring TV assignment in 1963, when in collaboration with playwright Clifford Odets, he appeared in the TV anthology series The Richard Boone Show. Unique among filmed dramatic programs, Boone's series featured a cast of eleven regulars (including Harry Morgan, Robert Blake, Jeanette Nolan, Bethel Leslie and Boone himself), who appeared in repertory, essaying different parts of varying sizes each week. The Richard Boone Show failed to catch on, and Boone went back to films. In 1972 he starred in another western series, this one produced by his old friend Jack Webb: Hec Ramsey, the saga of an old-fashioned sheriff coping with an increasingly industrialized West. In the last year of his life, Boone was appointed Florida's cultural ambassador. Richard Boone died at age 65 of throat cancer.

Trivia: Raised on a ranch near the Arizona border, American actress Lurene Tuttle took acting lessons in Phoenix while still a child. Feisty and naturally funny, she found work with Murphy's Comedians, a vaudeville troupe, then played traditional ingenues in a San Antonio stock company. Though she never appeared on Broadway, Tuttle was a busy stage actress throughout the '20s and '30s. When stock work dried up in the Depression, Ms. Tuttle entered radio, where she became one the busiest actresses in the business, playing everything from sugary high schoolers to hardbitten gun molls. Many of her fans feel that her best radio work was as Effie Perrine, the effusive and efficient secretary on The Adventures of Sam Spade, in which Howard Duff played private eye Spade. Concentrating on films and television as big-time radio faded, Tuttle played small character parts in several movies and was a regular on the TV sitcoms Life with Father, Father of the Bride and Julia. One of the actress' final performances was in the post-apocalyptic film drama Testament (1983), in which she was reunited with Leon Ames, her Life with Father and Father of the Bride costar. In private life, Lurene Tuttle was the wife of radio actor/announcer Mel Ruick, and the mother of musical comedy actress Barbara Ruick.

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from 1951.

Trivia: American actor Walter Barnes was what was described by casting directories as an "outdoor action type." His first regular TV work was as Finn on 1959's Tales of the Vikings, a Kirk Douglas-produced syndicated series filmed in the German Alps. Remaining in Europe, Barnes continued to work swashbucklers like Captain Sinbad (1963) and westerns like Frontier Hellcat (1966) and The Big Gundown (1968). He returned to America in the late 1960s, where he was featured in such westernized productions as John Wayne's Cahill: US Marshal (1970), The Travelling Executioner (1972), Mackintosh and J.J. (1975), and Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter (1973) (as Sheriff Sam Shaw) and Broncho Billy (1980). Walter Barnes was as sturdy and steadfast as ever in 1981, when he appeared as the father of sheriff Buford Pusser (Bo Svenson) on the weekly TV version of Walking Tall.

Trivia: Chubby, rubber-faced comedian Alan Carney knocked around vaudeville for years as a comic dialectician. After making his first film, 1941's Convoy, Carney signed a contract at RKO, appearing in choice supporting roles in such films as Mr. Lucky (1943). In 1943, Carney was teamed with Wally Brown (see entry 9048) as RKO's answer to Abbott and Costello. In addition to their inexpensive starring vehicles, Brown and Carney co-starred in Step Lively (1943), a musical remake of the Marx Bros.' Room Service (1938) (Wally played Chico's part, while Carney filled in for Harpo; the "Groucho" role was essayed by, of all people, Adolphe Menjou). Brown and Carney were also featured on a live USO tour arranged by the studio. After 1946's Genius at Work, RKO terminated the team's contracts. Alan Carney continued in films and TV as a supporting player, working prolifically at Disney Studios in the 1960s and 1970s; one of Carney's best latter-day roles was as Mayor Dawgmeat in the 1959 film musical Li'l Abner.

Trivia: American actor Paul Lukather played supporting roles on television, stage, and in feature films during the '50s and '60s.