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: Karl Swenson was one of the busiest performers in the so-called golden days of network radio. Swenson played the leading role in the seriocomic daily serial Lorenzo Jones, and was also heard on Our Gal Sunday as Lord Henry, the heroine's "wealthy and titled Englishman" husband. He carried over his daytime-drama activities into television, playing Walter Manning in the 1954 video version of radio's Portia Faces Life. From 1958 onward, Swenson was seen in many small roles in a number of big films: Judgment of Nuremberg (1961), How the West Was Won (1962), and The Birds (1963). One of his more sizeable movie assignments was the voice of Merlin in the 1963 Disney animated feature The Sword in the Stone. One of his last roles was the recurring part of Mr. Hansen on TV's Little House on the Prairie. Karl Swenson was married to actress Joan Tompkins.

Trivia: Although Texas-raised Allen Case was one of the busier actors on television during the 1950s and early '60s, he never broke through to lasting leading-man status despite a major assist from Henry Fonda. After a start as a singer in Dallas, Case made his breakthrough in New York on Arthur Godfrey's television show. He broke into movies with a small role in the screen version of Damn Yankees!. Over the next two years, Case had guest roles on Bronco, Have Gun-Will Travel, The Rifleman, Wagon Train, and other small screen Westerns. He was appearing off-Broadway when he was offered the co-starring role -- really the leading role -- in a Universal/NBC series called The Deputy, created by Roland Kibbee and Norman Lear. Fonda was the official star (and raison d'être) of the show, playing the chief marshal of the territory; but his character's work often carried him far away from the focus of the series (the town of Silver City), and his character was absent from most of the program's action in all but a dozen of the 76 episodes, whereas Case's character, Deputy Marshal Clay McCord, a shopkeeper-turned-lawman based in Silver City, was at the center of every episode. The series ran for two seasons and proved to be the peak of Case's career. He spent most of the '60s mostly working in Westerns -- even The Time Tunnel episode he did had him playing 19th century New Mexico lawman Pat Garrett -- and it was only in the '70s that he moved into more diverse roles in such vehicles as The Magician, The Bob Newhart Show, and Nero Wolfe. He died in 1986 at the age of 51.