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: Nineteen-year-old Leander Berg billed himself as Gene Berg when he made his professional debut as a skater in Sonja Henie's LA-based ice show. He was still Gene Berg when, while serving in World War II, he was featured as a dancer in the 1942 Broadway revue This is the Army. It wasn't until the 1948 stage musical Lend an Ear that Gene Berg reemerged as Gene Nelson. Signed to a 20th Century-Fox contract in 1947, Nelson co-starred in several of that studio's Technicolor song-and-dance fests, then moved on to the musical unit at Warner Bros. His best-known filmusical assignment was as high-kickin' cowpoke Will Parker in the 1955 superproduction Oklahoma. After briefly attempting to establish himself in dramatic roles, Nelson turned to directing. He called the shots in several Sam Katzman productions of the 1960s, notably the Elvis Presley vehicles Kissin' Cousins (1963) and Harum Scarum (1965), and the 1965 Hank Williams Sr. biopic Your Cheatin' Heart. He also directed dozens of TV episodes, working on such weeklies as The Rifleman, The Donna Reed Show and Mod Squad. There was talk that a serious injury in the mid-1950s had forced Gene Nelson to forego dancing in favor of directing; if so, he was sufficiently recovered in the 1970s, displaying his still-impressive terpsichorean skills in the Broadway musicals Follies and Good News.

Trivia: In British films from her teens, actress Patricia Medina came to Hollywood in the company of her first husband, actor Richard Greene, in 1946. Invited to film a screen test at MGM by studio president Louis B. Mayer, the raven-haired actress was signed to a contract -- then promptly ignored when Mayer left the studio on an extended business trip. Spending much of her MGM contract on loan-out, Medina appeared in 20th Century-Fox's Moss Rose (1948) and The Foxes of Harrow (1948), and at Universal in Francis (1950) and Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950). With the 1951 Columbia quickie The Magic Carpet, Medina established herself as the queen of the "B" costume pictures. One of her more worthwhile film assignments was as a femme fatale in Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin (1955). She was also an impressive wicked queen in Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961), and surprisingly adept at portraying a predatory lesbian in The Killing of Sister George (1968). On television, Medina guest-starred on such series as Thriller, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Man From UNCLE, usually as black-widow villainesses. Patricia Medina is the widow of actor Joseph Cotten, whom she married in 1960.