Trivia: The younger brother of Gunsmoke star James Arness, American actor Peter Graves worked as a musician and radio actor before entering films with 1950's Rogue River. At first, it appeared that Graves would be the star of the family, since he was cast in leads while brother Jim languished in secondary roles. Then came Stalag 17 (1953), in which Graves was first-rate as a supposedly all-American POW who turned out to be a vicious Nazi spy. Trouble was, Graves played the part too well, and couldn't shake the Nazi stereotype in the eyes of most Hollywood producers. Suddenly the actor found himself in such secondary roles as Shelley Winters' doomed husband in Night of the Hunter (1955) (he was in and out of the picture after the first ten minutes), while sibling James Arness was riding high with Gunsmoke. Dissatisfied with his film career, Graves signed on in 1955 for a network kid's series about "a horse and the boy who loved him." Fury wasn't exactly Citizen Kane, but it ran five years and made Graves a wealthy man through rerun residuals--so much so that he claimed to be making more money from Fury than his brother did from Gunsmoke. In 1966, Peter Graves replaced Steven Hill as head honcho of the force on the weekly TV adventure series Mission: Impossible, a stint that lasted until 1973. Though a better than average actor, Graves gained something of a camp reputation for his stiff, straight-arrow film characters and was often cast in films that parodied his TV image. One of the best of these lampoonish appearances was in the Zucker-Abrahams comedy Airplane (1980), as a nutty airline pilot who asks outrageous questions to a young boy on the plane (a part the actor very nearly turned down, until he discovered that Leslie Nielsen was co-starring in the film). Peter Graves effortlessly maintained his reliable, authoritative movie persona into the '90s and 2000s, and hosted the Biography series on A&E, for which he won an Emmy; he also guest-starred on programs including Cold Case, House and American Dad. Graves died of natural causes in March 2010, at age 83.

Trivia: Fans of the original action /espionage series Mission Impossible (1966-70) may recognize black actor Greg Morris for playing electronics wizard Barney Collier. Morris spent most of his career on television, appearing on such shows as Ben Casey, The Dick Van Dyck Show and The Twilight Zone. During the 1970s, Morris was a regular on Vega$ (1978-81), playing police officer Lt. David Neslon. A native of Cleveland who spent part of his childhood in New York City, his mother worked as a secretary for black labor leader A. Phillip Reynolds. Before becoming a television actor during the early '60s, Morris attended Ohio State University and the University of Iowa. Morris passed away at the age of 61 on August 27, 1996. The cause of death was unreported.

Trivia: The son of a Boston barber, Leonard Nimoy was a star at the age of 8, when he played Hansel in a children's theatre production of Hansel and Gretel. Nimoy remained with his local kiddie theater troupe until 16 (one of his directors during this period was Boris Sagal). After studying drama at Boston College and Antioch College, he took acting lessons from Jeff Corey at the Pasadena Playhouse. In films from 1950, Nimoy played the title character in the low-budget Kid Monk Baroni and essayed bits and minor roles in such productions as Zombies of the Stratosphere (1951), Rhubarb (1951) and Them! (1954). In between acting assignments, he held down a dizzying variety of jobs: soda jerk, newspaper carrier, vacuum-cleaner salesman, vending machine mechanic, pet-shop clerk, cabbie and acting coach. During his 18 months in Special Services at Fort McPherson, Georgia, he acted with Atlanta Theater Guild when he could spare the time. Back in Hollywood in 1956, he became virtually a regular at the Ziv TV studios, playing villains in programs like Highway Patrol and Sea Hunt. For a short while, he specialized in the plays of Jean Genet, appearing in both the stage and film productions of The Balcony and Deathwatch. Impressed by Nimoy's guest turn on a 1963 episode of The Lieutenant, producer Gene Roddenberry vowed to cast the saturnine, mellow-voiced actor as an extraterrestrial if ever given the chance. That chance came two years later, when Roddenberry signed Nimoy to play Vulcanian science officer Spock on Star Trek. At first pleased at the assignment, Nimoy came to resent the apparent fact that the public perceived him as Spock and nothing else: indeed, one of his many written works was the slim autobiography I Am Not Spock. After Star Trek's cancellation, Nimoy joined the cast of Mission: Impossible in the role of "master of disguise" Paris (he replaced the series' previous master of disguise Martin Landau, who ironically had originally been slated to play Spock). In the early 1970s, Nimoy began racking up directorial credits on such series as Night Gallery. He also made his first Broadway appearance in 1973's Full Circle. And, perhaps inevitably, he returned to Spock, thanks to the popular demand engendered by the then-burgeoning Star Trek cult. His initial reacquaintance with the role was as voiceover artist on the 1973 Saturday-morning cartoon version of Star Trek. Then Spock went on the back burner again as Nimoy devoted himself to his theatrical commitments (a touring production of Sherlock Holmes, his one-man show Vincent), his writing and directing activities, and his hosting chores on the long-running (1976-82) TV documentary series In Search Of.... Finally in 1978, Nimoy was back in his Enterprise uniform in the first of several Star Trek theatrical features. The Spock character was killed off in the second Trek picture The Wrath of Khan, but Nimoy stayed with the franchise as director of the next two feature-length Trek entries (PS: Spock also came back to life). He went on to direct such non-Trek filmic endeavors as 3 Men and a Baby (1987), The Good Mother (1988), Funny About Love (1990) and Holy Matrimony (1994). He also produced and acted in the 1991 TV movie Never Forget, and served as executive producer of the 1995 UPN network series Deadly Games. Perhaps because he will always have dozens of professional irons in the fire, Leonard Nimoy now seems resigned to being forever associated with the role that brought him international fame; his most recent autobiographical work was aptly titled I Am Spock. In 2009 he returned to his iconic role portraying Spock in J.J. Abrams smash-hit reboot of the Star Trek franchise. He next took on a recurring role in the sci-fi series Fringe, playing scientist William Bell. Nimoy made a final cameo appearance in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). He died in 2015, at age 83.

Trivia: Publicity notwithstanding, Lesley Ann Warren did not exactly burst fully grown into the world in 1966 to star in the Rodgers and Hammerstein TV special Cinderella. Trained at New York's Professional Children's School, Lesley Ann studied under Lee Strasberg before making her Broadway debut in 110 in the Shade, the 1964 musical version of The Rainmaker. On the strength of Cinderella, Lesley Ann was signed to a Disney contract; but after starring in The Happiest Millionaire (1966) and The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band, she rebelled against her studio-imposed sweetness-'n'-light image. Upon replacing Barbara Bain in the long-running espionage TVer Mission: Impossible in 1970, Warren publicly emphasized that her character, Dana Lambert, was a "now" person, wise in the ways of sex. She stayed with Mission for only a year, after which she established herself as a leading light in the made-for-TV movie field, frequently cast as an older woman involved romantically with a much-younger man. She earned an Academy Award nomination for her hilarious performance as bleach-blond gangster's moll Norma in Victor/Victoria (1981), then starred in a couple of intriguing Alan Rudolph-directed dramas, Choose Me (1984) and The Songwriter (1986). Her more recent roles include Molly, the homeless woman in Mel Brooks' Life Stinks(1991), who goes into a "death throes" act whenever she feels like it, and the barracuda booking agent for c-and-w star George Strait in Pure Country (1994). For nearly a decade, Lesley Ann Warren was the wife of producer/hairstylist Jon Peters.

Trivia: African-American actor Hari Rhodes first came to the widespread attention of televiewers with his portrayal of African native Mike on the TV series Daktari. Though he seldom had as much to do as series star Marshall Thompson, Rhodes developed a fan following during his three-year (1966-69) run with the program. Subsequent TV jobs included such roles as DA William Washburn on the 1969 law-and-order weekly The Protectors; Los Angeles mayor Dan Stoddard on the 1976 cop series Most Wanted; Brima Cesay on the landmark 1977 miniseries Roots; and Presidential retainer Coates on the 1979 "docudrama" Backstairs at the White House. Hari Rhodes died in January of 1992, a few months before the premiere of his final project, the made-for-TV feature Murder without Motive: The Edmund Perry Story.

Trivia: Morgan Farley made his first Broadway appearance in 1918 as one of the supporting players in Booth Tarkington's Seventeen. He gained prominence in the 1920s, starring in such stage productions as Candida and An American Tragedy. After a brief flurry of film activity in 1929-1930, he returned to the stage where he remained until interrupting his career to serve in WWII. Back in films as a character actor and dialogue coach in 1946, Morgan Farley went on to essay minor roles in such films as Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar (1953), in which he was seen in the expository part of Artimedorus. He made his last screen appearance in 1967.