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: One of Hollywood's premiere impressionists and comedians, Frank Gorshin is best remembered for his hypo-manic portrayal of the villainous, green-clad Riddler from the campy Batman television series of the 1960s. Gorshin made his film debut in the 1955 action-drama Hot Rod Girl. As a movie actor, Gorshin has spent the bulk of his career appearing in low-budget fare, but he has also worked in a few major features including Meteor Man (1993) and gave a well-received supporting performance in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (1996). He has also been on television as a guest star on comedies, dramas, and variety shows. Lovers of the first Star Trek series will know Gorshin from the anti-prejudice episode, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." Following the demise of the Batman series, Gorshin continued his film career as a character actor.

Trivia: American stage and film actor Phillip Coolidge made his first film, Boomerang, in 1948. Since much of the film was shot in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the New York-based actor didn't have to relocate to Hollywood for his brief assignment. Later film roles for Coolidge were on a par with his self-protective small-town mayor in Inherit the Wind (1960)--neither heroic nor villainous, but all too human. Seldom a leading character, Coolidge was always a reassuring presence in the supporting cast, be it as William Windom's brother on the 1960s TV series The Farmer's Daughter or in the teeny-tiny role of closet alcoholic Simon Stimson in the original 1938 Broadway production of Our Town. Phillip Coolidge's best and most recognizable film role was Ollie Higgins, the scheming silent-movie-theatre manager who literally scares his wife to death (and gets a suitable comeuppance) in William Castle's gimmicky thriller The Tingler (1959).