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: American actor Tom Drake inaugurated his acting career in 1938 with Clean Beds, a Broadway-bound play that closed out of town. A revived Clean Beds in 1939 brought Drake to the attention of MGM, who only half-heartedly promoted the actor, usually casting him in bits or secondary roles. His chance at stardom in White Cliffs of Dover (1944) was squelched when Drake's scenes were cut from that still-overlong wartime drama. A better opportunity came in the role of Judy Garland's "boy next door" vis-a-vis in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944); this was followed by an even meatier part in The Green Years (1946), in which Drake managed to keep his head above water despite such formidable supporting acting talent as Hume Cronyn, Charles Coburn, Jessica Tandy and Gladys Cooper. Unfortunately, the good roles began diminishing shortly afterward; Drake's performance as Richard Rodgers in Words and Music (1948) was knocked out of the box by Mickey Rooney's tyro interpretation of Lorenz Hart, while in Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949) everybody in the cast - including Shirley Temple - played second fiddle to Clifton Webb. Never able to fulfill his potential, Drake continued into the '70s playing subordinate roles in 'A' pictures, the occasional lead in low-budget films, and secondary TV parts in such productions as Marcus Welby MD and The Return of Joe Forrester. A classic example of how talented people could fall between the tracks of the studio contract system, Tom Drake spent his final years supplementing his performing income with a job as a used car salesman.

Trivia: Kathryn Hays is best known for her work as an actress on television -- ironically, her most notable credits in that medium reside in two vastly different genres and professional engagements: as a longtime member of the cast of the daytime drama As The World Turns, portraying Kim Sullivan Hughes for more than 30 years; and for her performance in a single 1968 episode of the science fiction series Star Trek, entitled "The Empath." Hays was born in Princeton, IL, and raised in Joliet. She did theatrical work from the outset of her career, but from the early '60s also distinguished herself on television -- starting with a 1962 episode of the police drama Naked City up through a regular role on The Guiding Light, and on to her multi-decade work on As the World Turns. The Star Trek episode "The Empath" cast Hays in a mute role as "Gem," an alien who is trapped beneath the surface of a dying planet with the captain (William Shatner), first officer (Leonard Nimoy), and senior medical officer (DeForest Kelley) of the starship Enterprise. Her wonderfully expressive features (especially her eyes) and her portrayal -- which was almost balletic at times -- allowed Hays to totally dominate the screen and the episode without uttering a word of dialogue; many fans of the series regard her work as the finest guest-starring portrayal in the entire run of the show, and she helped to turn "The Empath" into the best single episode of the series' third season. Around this same time, Hays also starred in one theatrical film, Ralph Nelson's music-and-war drama Counterpoint (1967), playing opposite Charlton Heston. During this period, from 1966 through 1969, she was also married to Glenn Ford, who was then part of the shrinking ranks of genuine big-screen legends in the movie business. As a New York-based actress, Hays' career has mostly been centered on the small screen, as well as the stage. She is virtually an acting institution among daytime drama aficionados, and her work on As the World Turns hasn't stopped her from doing occasional guest-star turns in such New York-filmed dramas as Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU in more recent years.

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: Bill Hickman is best known for his stunt work and expert driving in films of the '60s and '70s. Hickman specialized in chase scenes and prime examples of his work can be seen in such films as Bullitt, The Love Bug, The French Connection and What's up, Doc? He started out as a child appearing in the "Our Gang" series. Later in his career he also did some directing.

Trivia: American character actor Stuart Lancaster primarily appeared in films during the '70s, most often in those of exploitation king Russ Meyer, one of his personal friends.