Trivia: Chuck Connors attended Seton Hall University before embarking on a career in professional sports. He first played basketball with the Boston Celtics, then baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Chicago Cubs. Hardly a spectacular player -- while with the Cubbies, he hit .233 in 70 games -- Connors was eventually shipped off to Chicago's Pacific Coast League farm team, the L.A. Angels. Here his reputation rested more on his cut-up antics than his ball-playing prowess. While going through his usual routine of performing cartwheels while rounding the bases, Connors was spotted by a Hollywood director, who arranged for Connors to play a one-line bit as a highway patrolman in the 1952 Tracy-Hepburn vehicle Pat and Mike. Finding acting an agreeable and comparatively less strenuous way to make a living, Connors gave up baseball for films and television. One of his first roles of consequence was as a comic hillbilly on the memorable Superman TV episode "Flight to the North." In films, Connors played a variety of heavies, including raspy-voiced gangster Johnny O in Designing Woman (1957) and swaggering bully Buck Hannassy in The Big Country (1958). He switched to the Good Guys in 1958, when he was cast as frontiersman-family man Lucas McCain on the popular TV Western series The Rifleman. During the series' five-year run, he managed to make several worthwhile starring appearances in films: he was seen in the title role of Geronimo (1962), which also featured his second wife, Kamala Devi, and originated the role of Porter Ricks in the 1963 film version of Flipper. After Rifleman folded, Connors co-starred with Ben Gazzara in the one-season dramatic series Arrest and Trial (1963), a 90-minute precursor to Law and Order. He enjoyed a longer run as Jason McCord, an ex-Army officer falsely accused of cowardice on the weekly Branded (1965-1966). His next TV project, Cowboy in Africa, never got past 13 episodes. In 1972, Connors acted as host/narrator of Thrill Seekers, a 52-week syndicated TV documentary. Then followed a great many TV guest-star roles and B-pictures of the Tourist Trap (1980) variety. He was never more delightfully over the top than as the curiously accented 2,000-year-old lycanthrope Janos Skorzeny in the Fox Network's Werewolf (1987). Shortly before his death from lung cancer at age 71, Chuck Connors revived his Rifleman character Lucas McCain for the star-studded made-for-TV Western The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1993).

Trivia: Born in Indiana, Chad Everett attended high school in Dearborn, Michigan, where he played quarterback on the school football team. During his junior year at Wayne State University, Everett landed an acting role with a Michigan repertory company, accompanying the troupe on a State Department-sponsored tour of India. He headed to Hollywood in 1960, got nowhere fast, relocated to New York, did some modelling and TV commercials, then was signed to a $250-per week contract with Warner Bros. He made his film debut in Warners' Claudelle Inglish (1961), and co-starred in the studio's 1963 TV western series The Dakotas. Everett then signed with MGM, where he was featured in such films as Made in Paris (1964) and The Singing Nun (1965). In 1969, MGM's TV division cast Everett in his signature role as Dr. Joe Gannon in Medical Center, a popular weekly which ran until 1976. After Medical Center, Everett continued appearing in theatrical and made-for-TV movies, and also starred in three weekly series: Hagen (1980, as Paul Hagen), The Rousters (1983, as Wyatt Earp III) and McKenna (1994, as Jack McKenna). Chad Everett also wrote, directed and performed in several TV commercials and industrial films, and was the author of a self-published book of romantic poetry, written for and dedicated to his wife, actress Shelby Grant. He died of lung cancer in July 2012.

Trivia: American actor James Dunn's early career embraced bit parts in silent pictures, vaudeville, and Broadway before he made his talking picture bow in Bad Girl (1931). For the next several years, Dunn appeared in sentimental "lovable scamp" leading roles; he also helped introduce Shirley Temple to feature films by co-starring with the diminutive dynamo in Stand Up and Cheer, Baby Take a Bow, and Bright Eyes, all released in 1934. When Fox merged with 20th Century Pictures in 1935, the type of domestic comedy-dramas and free-wheeling musicals in which Dunn specialized came to an end; by the end of the 1930s Dunn's appearance were confined to "B" pictures and poverty-row quickies. Dunn was given a comeback chance as Peggy Ann Garner's irresponsible alcoholic father in the 1945 drama A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The actor won an Academy Award for his performance. Eight years passed before Dunn would be seen in films again, though he found occasional solace in TV work, including his tenure as the star of a 1955 sitcom, It's a Great Life. Dunn's final movie role, filmed two years before his death, was a minor part as an agent in the all-star "trash classic" The Oscar (1966).

Trivia: A graduate of the Nashville Conservatory and the model for U.S. Navy recruiting posters, John Pickard entered films in 1946 following a four-year stint in the navy. Pickard played supporting roles in scores of Westerns and action dramas before reaching stardom as Captain Shank of the U. S. Cavalry on the NBC television Western series Boots and Saddles. Filmed entirely on location at Kanab, UT, the series enjoyed a two-season run (1957-1958) and also featured Gardner McKay as Lieutenant Kelly. Pickard earned a second stab at small-screen stardom in Gunslinger (1961) and played supporting roles in nearly every other popular television drama, from Gunsmoke to Simon and Simon. He was tragically killed by a rampant bull while vacationing on a family farm in his home state of Tennessee.