Trivia: The son of a Jewish movie-publicist father and an Irish Catholic musical-comedy actress, Michael Landon grew up in a predominantly Protestant New Jersey neighborhood. The social pressures brought to bear on young Michael, both at home and in the schoolyard, led to an acute bedwetting problem, which he would later dramatize (very discreetly) in the 1976 TV movie The Loneliest Runner. Determined to better his lot in life, Landon excelled in high school athletics; his prowess at javelin throwing won him a scholarship at the University of Southern California, but a torn ligament during his freshman year ended his college career. Taking a series of manual labor jobs, Landon had no real direction in life until he agreed to help a friend audition for the Warners Bros. acting school. The friend didn't get the job, but Landon did, launching a career that would eventually span nearly four decades. Michael's first film lead was in the now-legendary I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), widely derided at the time but later reassessed as one of the better examples of the late-'50s "drive-in horror" genre. The actor received his first good reviews for his performance as an albino in God's Little Acre. This led to his attaining the title role in 1959's The Legend of Tom Dooley, which in turn was instrumental in his being cast as Little Joe Cartwright on the popular TV western Bonanza. During his fourteen-year Bonanza stint, Landon was given the opportunity to write and direct a few episodes. He carried over these newfound skills into his next TV project, Little House on the Prairie, which ran from 1974 to 1982 (just before Little House, Landon made his TV-movie directorial bow with It's Good to Be Alive, the biopic of baseball great Roy Campanella). Landon also oversaw two spinoff series, Little House: The New Beginning (1982-83) and Father Murphy (1984). Landon kept up his career momentum with a third long-running TV series, Highway to Heaven (1984-89) wherein the actor/producer/director/writer played guardian angel Jonathan Smith. One of the most popular TV personalities of the '70s and '80s, Landon was not universally beloved by his Hollywood contemporaries, what with his dictatorial on-set behavior and his tendency to shed his wives whenever they matured past childbearing age. Still, for every detractor, there was a friend, family member or coworker who felt that Landon was the salt of the earth. In early 1991, Landon began work on his fourth TV series, Us, when he began experiencing stomach pains. In April of that same year, the actor was informed that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. The courage and dignity with which Michael Landon lived his final months on earth resulted in a public outpouring of love, affection and support, the like of which was seldom witnessed in the cynical, self-involved '90s. Michael Landon died in his Malibu home on July 1, 1991, with his third wife Cindy at his side.

Trivia: Actor Ken Howard was 6'5" when he was a junior at Manhasset High School (he would later peak at 6'6"), and it was this physical fact, coupled with his remarkable athletic prowess, that assured him a position in Manhasset's "starting five." Offered several athletic scholarships, Howard turned them all down in favor of a liberal arts education at Amherst College, where he developed a taste for theatre. After two years' graduate work at the Yale School of Drama, he dropped out to accept a small role in the Broadway musical Promises Promises. In 1969, Howard graduated to stage stardom as Thomas Jefferson in the popular musical 1776, a role he would repeat in the 1972 film version. He went on to win a Tony Award for his performance in Child's Play, and to spend his summers essaying his two favorite roles, Billy Bigelow in Carousel and Chance Wayne in Sweet Bird of Youth. His first film was the 1970 Otto Preminger production Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. In 1973, Howard and his frequent co-star Blythe Danner were cast in the series-TV version of the Tracy-Hepburn picture Adam's Rib (both stars had previously turned down MacMillan and Wife). Neither this series nor Howard's subsequent Manhunter (1974) clicked with the public. He was far more successful as high school basketball coach Ken Hughes on The White Shadow, which ran from 1976 to 1981 (and which, coincidentally, was produced by Blythe Danner's husband Bruce Paltrow). Howard's later TV projects included the title character in the 1984 American Playhouse production of Mark Twain's "Pudd'nhead Wilson;" the recurring role of Garret Boydston on both Dynasty and The Colbys (1985-86); his hosting chores on the syndicated 1986 talent show Dream Girl USA; and another hosting stint on the NBC documentary weekly What Happened? (1992). In 2009, Howard was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild, a role he would continue after the union merged with another and became SAG-AFTRA. He continued to work as an actor, appearing on shows like Crossing Jordan, Cane, and 30 Rock, as well as movies like The Beacon. Howard died in 2016, at age 71.

Trivia: Brusque character actor Dana Elcar was usually assigned roles calling for blunt imperiousness. He became especially handy in films and TV shows of the 1970s, portraying curt, dour, meticulously groomed authority figures at odds with dishevelled "hippie" and "gonzo" types. Elcar's first film after many years' stage work was 1968's Pendulum; other film credits include Soldier Blue (1969), W.C.Fields and Me (1976), and The Nude Bomb (1980). In 1985, Dana Elcar was cast as Peter Thornton, boss of troubleshooting Richard Dean Anderson, on the TV series MacGiver; Elcar continued playing the role into the 1990s, at which time the actor's real-life blindness required him to incorporate dark glasses and a cane into his characterization.

Trivia: Diminutive Irish-American character actor Walter Burke kicked off his film career in 1948. Burke's weaselly, cigarette-dangling-from-lips characterization of political flunky Sugar Boy in the Oscar-winning All the King's Men (1949) set the tone for most of his later roles. Though often afforded meaty roles on television -- he was one of several actors who subbed for William Talman during the 1960-1961 season of Perry Mason -- Burke had no objection to accepting tiny but memorable bits, such as the cockney who warns Eliza Doolittle, "There's a bloke be'ind that pillar, takin' down every word that you're sayin'!" in the opening scene of My Fair Lady (1964). In another unbilled assignment, Burke convincingly voice-doubled for narrator Walter Winchell in a handful of early-'60s episodes of The Untouchables. Closing out his film career in the early '70s, Walter Burke moved to Pennsylvania, where he became an acting teacher.

Trivia: White-haired, patriarchal Canadian actor Lorne Greene attended Queen's University in pursuit of a chemical engineering degree. Amateur college theatricals whetted his appetite for the stage, and upon graduation he decided upon a performing career. He started out on radio, eventually emerging as Canada's top newscaster, designated "the voice of the CBC" (For a while, Greene managed a mail-order announcer's school; one of the "pupils" was Leslie Nielsen). Moving to New York in 1950, Greene became a stage, film and TV actor, co-starring on Broadway with Katherine Cornell in Prescott Proposals and in films with the likes of Paul Newman, Ginger Rogers and Joan Crawford, generally in villainous roles. In 1959, Greene was cast as Ben Cartwright, owner of the Ponderosa ranch and father of three headstrong sons, in TV's Bonanza. He would hold down this job until 1972; during the series' run, Greene unexpectedly became a top-ten recording artist with his hit single "Ringo." Upon the cancellation of Bonanza, Greene vowed he'd retire, but within one year he was playing a private detective on the brief TV weekly Griff. Five years later, he starred on the network sci-fier Battlestar Gallactica. Active as chairman of the National Wildlife Foundation, Greene put forth the organization's doctrine in his popular syndicated TV series Lorne Greene's Last of the Wild. His final weekly television appearance was on the 1980 adventure series Code Red. In 1987, Lorne Greene was all set to recreate Ben Cartwright for the 2-hour TV movie Bonanza: The Next Generation, but he died before shooting started and was replaced by John Ireland.

Trivia: A former pro baseball player, Bing Russell eased into acting in the 1950s, appearing mostly in westerns. Russell could be seen in such bonafide classics as The Horse Soldiers (1959) and The Magnificent Seven (1960), and not a few bow-wows like Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966). From 1961 through 1973, Russell played the semiregular role of Deputy Clem on the marathon TV western series Bonanza. When time permitted, he also dabbled in screenwriting. The father of film star Kurt Russell, Bing Russell has acted with his son on several occasions, most memorably in the role of Vernon Presley in the 1979 TV-movie hit Elvis.

Trivia: Square-jawed, mellow-voiced character actor David Canary achieved his greatest prominence on television, in roles that typecast him as a "man's man" with an unmistakably tough edge but a smooth demeanor and approach. Born in Elwood, IN, Canary grew up in Ohio as the son of a JC Penney manager. He took to musical performance (as a baritone vocalist) during adolescence, then after high school attended the University of Cincinnati on a football scholarship and concurrently took classes at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, qualifying as the first person to combine studies at both institutions, graduating as a music major in voice from the university. During that period, the university theater director, Paul Rutledge, observed Canary's innate dramatic gifts and strongly encouraged the student to try out for roles in numerous productions, many of which he landed with great ease, thereby opening himself up to a talent all but unrecognized and untapped, and paving the way for a prestigious foray into acting that commenced with several years of summer stock. Canary began his professional acting career on-stage, in musicals, but he made his Broadway debut in the play Great Day in the Morning, opposite Colleen Dewhurst. His career was put on hold for a time when he was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed at a base in Texas, but he made the most of it, entertaining the troops and winning the All Army Entertainment Contest for best popular singer. When his service time was completed, Canary returned to the theater, but it wasn't long before he moved into filmed work.As a professional actor, Canary divided his time between big- and small-screen outings, but placed his strongest emphasis on television. He is best known for two ongoing, multi-season series roles: Candy, a wanderer hired onto the Cartwright property as a ranch hand, on the immensely popular Western saga Bonanza (a part held from 1967 through 1970 and again during the final season of 1972-1973), and -- on a much different note -- long-running portrayals of twins Adam and Stuart Chandler on the ABC daytime drama All My Children. Canary retired from acting in 2013; he died in 2015, at age 77.

Trivia: Racking up a staggering number of small-screen credits over the course of his impressive 50-year career, Stacy Keach Sr. also appeared in countless television commercials in addition to feature roles in The Parallax View (1974), Pretty Woman (1990), and Cobb (1994), among many others. Born Walter Stacy Keach in Chicago, IL, in May of 1914, the future star earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Northwestern and impressed teachers so much that he was appointed a Dramatic Arts instructor as a graduate student. Keach would subsequently teach at Armstrong College and founded the Savannah Playhouse, later relocating to the West Coast for a stint at the Pasadena Playhouse. It was there that Keach was signed by Universal Studios as an actor/director/writer, and though he would stay there for nearly five years he would eventually relocate to RKO as a producer. During his stint at RKO, Keach would produce and direct the popular radio series Tales of the Texas Rangers. Keach was widely recognized for his roles on such popular television series as The Lone Ranger, Mannix, and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. In addition to his work in the entertainment industry, Keach also founded Kayden Records, an award-winning education company, and proved an early developer of industrial films. The father of actors Stacy and James, Keach married Mary Cain Peckham in June of 1937 and remained wed until his death resulting from heart failure in early 2003. He was 88.

Trivia: As a child actor, Tim Matheson was billed under his fuller family name of Matthieson. His first weekly TV co-starring assignment was opposite Robert Young in the 1961 "dramedy" Window on Main Street. The young actor's voice became familiar to a generation of cartoon fans via his "role" as the title character in Hanna-Barbera's Jonny Quest. The handsome Matheson appeared on-screen during his maturation years on such western series as The Virginian, Bonanza, and The Quest. He remained busy in films during this period, scoring his biggest 1970s success as party animal Otter in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). Matheson also kept his hand in the voiceover business, providing the truculent mutterings of "Blood" the dog in Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog (1975) and recording the narration for the 1985 revival of Disney's Fantasia. His adult TV appearances have included weekly stints on the TV series Tucker's Witch (1982), Just in Time, (1988) and Charlie Hoover (1991). Turning to directing in 1985, Matheson has been active in episodic television, music videos and direct-to-cassette movies. In 1989, he became CEO of the National Lampoon Company, though he still manages to find time for the occasional acting assignment, appearing in everything from the theatrical feature Drop Dead Fred to the live-action prologue for one of the "thrill rides" at Disneyworld.

Trivia: In films from the mid-'60s, American actor Richard Bull was seen in The Satan Bug (1965), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Secret Life of an American Wife (1969), Newman's Law (1971), and several other major Hollywood productions. Many of these roles were bits or atmosphere characters: guards, policemen, and the like. Television afforded Bull larger character roles, especially in the sitcom field. Within a ten-year period (1964-1974), he guested on Gidget, Family Affair, Gomer Pyle, USMC, The Andy Griffith Show, My 3 Sons, Room 222, and Bewitched (as pilgrim John Alden in a "flashback" episode). He also had a recurring role as a ship's doctor on the mid-'60s fantasy weekly Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. From 1974 through 1982, Richard Bull played store proprietor Nels Oleson, the even-tempered, long-suffering husband of overbearing Harriet Oleson on Little House on the Prairie. Bull continued to appear in films and episodes of TV shows until his death in 2014 at age 89.

Trivia: Wiry, solemn-faced American actor Curt Conway interrupted stage work to appear in his first film, Gentleman's Agreement (1947). As Bert McAnny in the Oscar-winning film, Conway was one of many Anglo-Saxon types who opened mouth and inserted foot when Gregory Peck, investigating anti-Semitism, pretended to be Jewish. Conway was a stalwart of television's "live" days of the '50s, at which time he did some directing as well as acting. Twilight Zone fans will remember a heavily made-up Conway in the 1963 episode "He's Alive"; the actor played a shadowy stranger who gives advice to a neo-Nazi activist (Dennis Hopper) on how to get ahead, and who at the end of the episode turns out to be--to everyone's surprise but the audience--Adolph Hitler. Having begun his film career in a movie indictment of race prejudice, Curt Conway ended his career in a film dealing with the same subject, 1971's The Man.

Trivia: Arthur Peterson played character and supporting roles on stage, television, and feature films. On television, fans of the series Soap (1977-1981), a funny spoof of soap operas, may remember Peterson for playing the Major. North Dakota born and raised, Peterson first obtained a degree in theater from the University of Minnesota before becoming a professional actor with the first Federal Theater Project. Peterson made his media debut in 1936 with a regular role on the radio serial The Guiding Light. During WWII, Peterson fought within General Patton's third regimen. Upon his discharge, Peterson appeared in the ABC network's first situation comedy, That's O'Toole. Peterson's stage work included appearances in such plays as Inherit the Wind. His film career has been sporadic, including such titles as Born Wild (1968) and the television movie Rollercoaster (1977). Peterson spent 1981 to 1991 touring the country with his wife in a Pasadena Playhouse production of The Gin Game (a play made famous on Broadway by Jessica Tandy and her husband Hume Cronyn). When the play's long run ended, Peterson retired from acting. He passed away on October 31, 1996, of Alzheimer's disease in the Amberwood Convalescent Hospital in Los Angeles at age 83.

Trivia: Staats Cotsworth is scarcely remembered today by anybody outside of the acting profession, and even then, they'd need to be very old actors to recall him. He had only three feature-film appearances to his credit, and didn't do too much theater work either, nor did he need to: For much of the 1940s, he was radio's busiest actor, performing continuing roles in as many as ten series at any given time, including Lone Journey, Stella Dallas, and Mr. and Mrs. North, and starring in Casey, Crime Photographer. Born in Oak Park, IL, in 1908, Cotsworth entered the acting profession as a member of Eva Le Gallienne's repertory company in New York. His arrival in the city coincided with the boom in radio, which became the dominant mass medium of the 1930s and was centered in New York. Although he was a classically trained actor with experience in Shakespearean roles, Cotsworth gravitated toward the new medium, which seemed to offer vast opportunities, and it was there that he made his name and his fortune. By the mid-'40s, when the average American's salary was 3,000 dollars a year, Cotsworth earned over 50,000 dollars a year on radio. It was only in the mid-'50s, with the medium's decline, that he began working on television, first on anthology series such as Studio One out of New York, and later on programs such as Dr. Kildare and Bonanza from Hollywood. During the 1960s, he was also a regular on As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, and also played the avuncular male lead in "Go Fight City Hall," a failed pilot for a proposed series that was to have starred Irene Dunne as a widowed mother who enters local politics. By that time, in his late fifties and sixties, he slipped easily into dignified older male character roles, often playing judges, senators, and similar parts. Cotsworth made his first feature-film appearance in Peyton Place (1957), playing Charles Partidge, and later appeared in Anthony Harvey's New York-filmed comedy They Might Be Giants (1971) (he was one of a group of old-time players, including Worthington Miner, Sudie Bond, and Frances Fuller, who appeared in the film). He also did a voice-over role in the 1973 horror movie Silent Night, Bloody Night.

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Big, burly Dan Blocker only did a handful of movies in his 17-year acting career, but he became one of the most beloved and popular television stars of the 1960s for his portrayal of Hoss Cartwright on the Western series Bonanza. Weighing 14 pounds at birth, Blocker was the largest baby ever born in Bowie County, TX. At 18, he stood 6'3" and weighed close to 300 pounds, and was legendary for his physical prowess. Blocker attended the Texas Military Institute and studied for his B.A. at Sul Ross State College, where he initially majored in athletics. His build accidentally led him to the drama department for a production of Arsenic and Old Lace -- a stage hand was needed who was big and strong enough to quickly remove the dummies representing corpses on the set, between acts. While working on the production, Blocker was bitten by the acting bug and switched his major to drama. He pursued his theatrical aspirations in earnest after graduation, working in one season of summer stock before he was drafted. Blocker served in combat during the Korean War, after which he earned a master's degree, married, moved to Los Angeles, and settled down to raise a family, earning his living as a high school teacher. It was his successful audition for the small role of a cavalry lieutenant on Gunsmoke during the 1956 season, in the episode "Alarm at Pleasant Valley," that rekindled Blocker's interest in an acting career. Over the next three years, he took any work that he could get, on programs like Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, Cheyenne, Tales of Wells Fargo, Zane Grey Theater, Wagon Train, Colt .45, Zorro, Maverick, and Richard Diamond, Private Detective. Blocker also got some movie work, portraying a bartender in the offbeat murder mystery The Girl in Black Stockings and an android in Outer Space Jitters, a very late Three Stooges short. His career took an upturn when he got a guest-starring role in an episode of the series The Restless Gun, starring John Payne, in 1958; his work was good enough to catch the attention of the producer, David Dortort. A year later, Dortort was putting together a new, hour-long Western series called Bonanza and cast Blocker in the role of "Hoss" Cartwright, the big-boned, good-natured middle son in a ranching family near Virginia City, NV, set in the mid- to late 19th century (the time frame of Bonanza was always vague, with stories shifting between the early 1860s to the 1870s and 1880s). Blocker's character's real name, incidentally, was Eric, but Hoss -- a nickname from his mother's Norwegian language that meant "friend" -- was what he was known as to everyone on the series and all viewers. Despite the weaknesses in the scripts during the early seasons, the role was a dream part for the actor, who got a chance to display his gentle, sensitive side as well as his gift for comedy, and also work in a serious dramatic context as well on many occasions, and show off his brute strength as well. It is arguable that Blocker was the most popular member of the cast during the 1960s; he was especially beloved of younger viewers, in part because his character was always very sympathetic to children. In contrast to the other stars of the series, Blocker's big-screen career wasn't halted by his work on Bonanza. He appeared in The Errand Boy, playing himself in an uncredited cameo, and played a role in the Frank Sinatra movie Come Blow Your Horn. Blocker got his first major movie part five years later in the Sinatra film Lady in Cement (1968), playing Waldo Gronsky, a burly, potentially murderous thug who hires private detective Tony Rome (played by Sinatra) to find his missing girlfriend. By the end of the 1960s, Blocker was taken seriously enough as an actor to star in two features, Something for a Lonely Man, a beautiful and poignant Western/comedy-drama, and the broader comedy The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County. Some of Blocker's television appearances separate from Bonanza also reflected his personal side -- his politics were essentially liberal Democratic (in sharp contrast to the conservative Republican sympathies of his co-stars Michael Landon and Lorne Greene), and he appeared in several public service announcements promoting brotherhood and racial tolerance, as well as on one television special that gently satirized American popular culture, starring Henry Fonda. He was also part of the liberal contingent in the 1971 John Wayne-hosted patriotic special Swing Out, Sweet Land. In 1972, Blocker was chosen for what could have been the breakthrough role to a major movie career, when he won the part of Roger Wade, the has-been author in Robert Altman's revisionist detective movie The Long Goodbye. In May of that year, however, he went into the hospital for routine gall bladder surgery, and during recovery he died suddenly of a blood clot in his lung. Sterling Hayden replaced Blocker in The Long Goodbye, which was dedicated to the actor's memory. Blocker's passing, immediately before the shooting for the 1972-1973 season of Bonanza was to begin, signed the death knell for the series. The cast and crew were genuinely shaken by his sudden death; scripts had to be hastily rewritten to explain the passing of Hoss Cartwright, and Blocker's absence and the reason behind it removed any element of lightheartedness that the series had displayed. The final season, despite the best efforts of surviving stars Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, and David Canary, was characterized by grim, downbeat stories and a dark mood that seemed to repel longtime viewers. Coupled with this change in tone, the NBC network moved Bonanza from its longtime Sunday nighttime slot to Tuesday nights, where it died a quick death, cancellation coming halfway through the 1972-1973 season. Blocker left behind a wife and four children, among them actor Dirk Blocker and director/producer David Blocker. He also left behind a legacy of good will that survives to this day, as Bonanza is in perpetual reruns on various cable channels, decades after its cancellation. Significantly, the final season, in which he did not appear, is the body of episodes that is shown (and requested) the least of its 14 years' worth of programs.