Trivia: In an industry of prima donnas, actress Barbara Stanwyck was universally recognized as a consummate professional; a supremely versatile performer, her strong screen presence established her as a favorite of directors, including Cecil B. De Mille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra. Born Ruby Stevens July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, NY, she was left orphaned at the age of four and raised by her showgirl sister. Upon quitting school a decade later, she began dancing in local speakeasies and at the age of 15 became a Ziegfeld chorus girl. In 1926, Stanwyck made her Broadway debut in The Noose, becoming a major stage star in her next production, Burlesque. MGM requested a screen test, but she rejected the offer. She did, however, agree to a supporting role in 1927's Broadway Nights, and after completing her stage run in 1929 appeared in the drama The Locked Door. With her husband, comedian Frank Fay, Stanwyck traveled to Hollywood. After unsuccessfully testing at Warner Bros., she appeared in Columbia's low-budget Mexicali Rose, followed in 1930 by Capra's Ladies of Leisure, the picture which shot her to stardom. A long-term Columbia contract was the result, and the studio soon loaned Stanwyck to Warners for 1931's Illicit. It was a hit, as was the follow-up Ten Cents a Dance. Reviewers were quite taken with her, and with a series of successful pictures under her belt, she sued Columbia for a bigger salary; a deal was struck to share her with Warners, and she split her time between the two studios for pictures including Miracle Woman, Night Nurse, and Forbidden, a major hit which established her among the most popular actresses in Hollywood. Over the course of films like 1932's Shopworn, Ladies They Talk About, and Baby Face, Stanwyck developed an image as a working girl, tough-minded and often amoral, rarely meeting a happy ending; melodramas including 1934's Gambling Lady and the following year's The Woman in Red further established the persona, and in Red Salute she even appeared as a student flirting with communism. Signing with RKO, Stanwyck starred as Annie Oakley; however, her contract with the studio was non-exclusive, and she also entered into a series of multi-picture deals with the likes of Fox (1936's A Message to Garcia) and MGM (His Brother's Wife, co-starring Robert Taylor, whom she later married).For 1937's Stella Dallas, Stanwyck scored the first of four Academy Award nominations. Refusing to be typecast, she then starred in a screwball comedy, Breakfast for Two, followed respectively by the downcast 1938 drama Always Goodbye and the caper comedy The Mad Miss Manton. After the 1939 De Mille Western Union Pacific, she co-starred with William Holden in Golden Boy, and with Henry Fonda she starred in Preston Sturges' outstanding The Lady Eve. For the 1941 Howard Hawks comedy Ball of Fire, Stanwyck earned her second Oscar nomination. Another superior film, Capra's Meet John Doe, completed a very successful year. Drama was the order of the day for the next few years, as she starred in pictures like The Gay Sisters and The Great Man's Lady. In 1944, she delivered perhaps her most stunning performance in Billy Wilder's classic noir Double Indemnity. Stanwyck's stunning turn as a femme fatale secured her a third Oscar bid and helped make her, according to the IRS, the highest-paid woman in America. It also won her roles in several of the decade's other great film noirs, including 1946's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and 1949's The File on Thelma Jordon. In between, Stanwyck also starred in the 1948 thriller Sorry, Wrong Number, her final Academy Award-nominated performance. The 1950s, however, were far less kind, and strong roles came her way with increasing rarity. With Anthony Mann she made The Furies and with Lang she appeared opposite Marilyn Monroe in 1952's Clash by Night, but much of her material found her typecast -- in 1953's All I Desire, she portrayed a heartbroken mother not far removed from the far superior Stella Dallas, while in 1954's Blowing Wild she was yet another tough-as-nails, independent woman. Outside of the all-star Executive Suite, Stanwyck did not appear in another major hit; she let her hair go gray, further reducing her chances of winning plum parts, and found herself cast in a series of low-budget Westerns. Only Samuel Fuller's 1957 picture Forty Guns, a film much revered by the Cahiers du Cinema staff, was of any particular notice. It was also her last film for five years. In 1960, she turned to television to host The Barbara Stanwyck Show, winning an Emmy for her work.Stanwyck returned to cinemas in 1962, portraying a lesbian madam in the controversial Walk on the Wild Side. Two years later, she co-starred with Elvis Presley in Roustabout. That same year, she appeared in the thriller The Night Walker, and with that, her feature career was over. After rejecting a role in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, she returned to television to star in the long-running Western series The Big Valley, earning another Emmy for her performance as the matriarch of a frontier family. Upon the show's conclusion, Stanwyck made a TV movie, The House That Would Not Die. She then appeared in two more, 1971's A Taste of Evil and 1973's The Letters, before vanishing from the public eye for the remainder of the decade. In 1981, she was awarded an honorary Oscar; two years later, she was also the recipient of a Lincoln Center Life Achievement Award. Also in 1983, Stanwyck returned to television to co-star in the popular miniseries The Thorn Birds. Two years later, she headlined The Colbys, a spin-off of the hugely successful nighttime soap opera Dynasty. It was her last project before retiring. Stanwyck died January 20, 1990.

Trivia: While still a high-school student, Richard Long was selected to play the son of Claudette Colbert in 1946's Tomorrow is Forever. A subsequent supporting role as Loretta Young's brother in the Orson Welles-directed The Stranger proved that Long had talent as well as looks, and that his good showing in the Colbert picture had not been a fluke. Despite a good start, Long's film career had waned by the mid-1950s. He finally gained stardom on television, notably on the various series produced by Warner Bros. between 1957 and 1963. Long played Gentleman Jack Darby on Maverick and detective Rex Randolph on Bourbon Street Beat; he carried over the "Randolph" character into 77 Sunset Strip, starting with the 1960-61 season. Later TV starring stints for Richard Long included The Big Valley (1965-69) as frontier attorney Jarrod Barkley, and Nanny and the Professor (70-71), as guess which of the two title characters. Richard Long died of a heart ailment at the age of 47.

Trivia: A football star at Eastern Kentucky State College, Lee Majors came to Los Angeles armed with a physical education degree and possessed with a vague desire to break into films. He worked as a park recreation director for the City of Los Angeles before entering show business in 1963. Majors was promoted as "the New James Dean," though he personally aspired to become a new Steve McQueen or Paul Newman (he also retained his permit to work as a recreation director, just in case the world wasn't holding its breath for a new Dean, McQueen or Newman). Majors achieved stardom on his own merits in a variety of television series, the most recent of which was 1992's Raven. His best-known TV roles included Heath Barkley on The Big Valley (1965-69), bionic Steve Austin on The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-78) and stunt man Colt Seavers on The Fall Guy (1981-86). In addition, he has headlined a number of made-for-TV movies, essaying the old Gary Cooper part in the 1991 sequel to High Noon and portraying U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in a 1976 biopic. Majors would continue to act in the decades to come, memorably appearing in Big Fat Liar and on The Game. For several years, Lee Majors was married to actress Farrah Fawcett.

Trivia: While attending Hollywood High School, Linda Evanstad (born November 18, 1942) accompanied a nervous classmate to an audition for a Canada Dry TV commercial. Impressed by the brunette, wholesomely pretty Evans, the ad-agency director invited her to read as well. After this and two subsequent commercial spots, Evans began making the TV guest-star rounds on such series as Bachelor Father, Ozzie and Harriet, The Untouchables and The 11th Hour. Her fortunes improved when she cut the "stad" off her last name and dyed her hair blonde. As Linda Evans, she made her first important film appearance as kidnapped pop singer Sugar Kane in the 1963 confection Beach Blanket Bingo; that same year, she was signed to an MGM contract, though she spent much of it on loan-out to other studios. From 1965 to 1969, Evans was co-starred on the TV western The Big Valley as the ever-imperiled Audra Barkley. Thereafter, her life and career was under the strict guidance of her then-husband, actor/director John Derek. Once free of Derek's influence, Evans was compelled to virtually start all over again in such lower-berth film efforts as Mitchell (1975). When she was hired to play the long-suffering Krystle Carrington on the long-running (1981-89) nighttime serial Dynasty, Evans' comeback was full and complete. Evans reprised her role as Krystle Carrington for Dynasty: The Reunion, a television series that aired in 1991. After working in a variety of made-for-television movies throughout the 1990s, Evans decided to retire from screen acting towards the end of the decade. However, the actress wouldn't disappear from television entirely, and neither would her legendary Dynasty persona (in 2005, actress Melora Hardin portrayed Evans herself for Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure, a fictionalized television movie based on the production of Dynasty). The following year, Evans reunited with her Dynasty alumni for a non-fiction reunion special titled Dynasty: Catfights and Caviar. The actress appeared in -- and won -- the British television reality series Hell's Kitchen. Evans enjoys the reputation of being one of Hollywood's nicest and most gracious actresses. A persuasive spokesperson, she has endorsed several commercial products and worked tirelessly on behalf of the pro-environment movement.

Trivia: Character actor Bert Freed prepared for his theatrical career at Penn State. Freed made his first Broadway appearance in the forgotten 1942 production Johnny 2 X 4, then went on to such long-running efforts as Counterattack, One Touch of Venus and Annie Get Your Gun. In films from 1947, he was most often cast as big-city detectives and small-town sheriffs. Some of his more memorable movie roles include Sgt. Boulanger in Paths of Glory (1957), Christopher Jones' institutionalized father in Wild in the Streets (1968), and all-around meanie Stuart Posner in Billy Jack (1969). A busy television actor, Freed settled down to a weekly-series grind only once, as Rufe Ryker on the 1966 video version of Shane. Outside of his performing activities, Bert Freed was for many years a member of the Motion Picture Academy's Committee of Foreign Films.

Trivia: After a forgettable film debut in 1952's My Cousin Rachel, Irish leading lady Audrey Dalton was "introduced" with a blitz of publicity in The Girls of Pleasure Island (1953). Of the three toothsome heroines in this harmless sex farce (the others were Joan Elan and Dorothy Bromley), Audrey was the only one to go on to any kind of lasting career, perhaps due to her solid training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. She later appeared in the The Monster That Challenged the World (1957) or Mister Sardonicus (1961), but was more successful on her many TV guest appearances of the 1960s.

Trivia: Not to be confused with the 1940s bit player of the same name, American leading man Peter Breck was the son of a bandleader. Majoring in drama and minoring in psychology at the University of Houston, Breck went the regional-theater route until selected by Robert Mitchum for a role in Mitchum's Thunder Road (1958). He paid a few further dues on network television, showing up now and then as Doc Holiday on the weekly Western Maverick. In 1959, Breck starred in his own sagebrush series, Black Saddle, in which he played gunslinger-turned-lawyer Clay Culhane. When the series was dropped after one season, he accepted a few low-paying theater assignments, making ends meet with whatever odd jobs came along. His tenacity paid off when, in 1969, Breck was cast as firebrand "number two son" Nick Barkeley on The Big Valley, which ran for four years. A decade later, he appeared in still another Western, playing a megalomaniac miner in the serialized Secret Empire. Peter Breck has devoted considerable time to teaching drama in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Trivia: Lew Gallo was a general-purpose actor in theater and television and, occasionally, feature films, who moved up to producing for television in the 1970s and '80s. Gallo was born in 1928 in Mt. Kisco, NY, and made his Broadway debut in 1955 with a role in George Axelrod's satirical comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, which starred Orson Bean, Martin Gabel, Jayne Mansfield, and Walter Matthau. By 1957, Gallo had moved to Hollywood, where his early feature-film credits included roles in I Want to Live!, Pork Chop Hill, and Odds Against Tomorrow. During the early '60s, he also appeared in Soldier in the Rain and PT 109.Gallo was most active in television, however, starting in the late '50s, and he did his share of Westerns, including Gunsmoke and The Virginian. It was at Fox, however, that he seemed to keep busiest -- he had a recurring role on 12 O'Clock High as Major Joseph Cobb, and also appeared in episodes of Adventures in Paradise. Additionally, producer Irwin Allen apparently liked his work as well, and used him in episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, and The Time Tunnel. Gallo was equally good at portraying working stiffs and enlisted men, and high-ranking officers and educated, even devious, authority figures, and he was never "typed" in either movies or television. By the start of the 1970s, however, he had moved into production on the comedy anthology series Love, American Style.Although he continued to take acting roles into the 1990s, Gallo was much busier on the production side, on series such as Lucan and Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, and made-for-television features such as Mafia Princess. He died in June of 2000, one day before his 72nd birthday, while being treated for an aortic aneurysm.

Trivia: Best described as a young George Kennedy type (though he and Kennedy were contemporaries), American actor Mort Mills spent three decades playing omniprescent and menacing types. He started out in films in the early '50s, showing up briefly in such productions as Affair in Trinidad (1952) and Farmer Takes a Wife (1955). He also seemed to be lurking in the background, taking in the information at hand and waiting to saunter over and pounce upon someone smaller than himself (which was just about everyone). Mills' character straddled both sides of the law: He was a friendly frontier sheriff in the 1958 syndicated TV western Man without a Gun and a less friendly police lieutenant on the 1960 network adventure weekly Dante; conversely, he was vicious western gunslinger Trigger Mortis in the 1965 Three Stooges feature The Outlaws is Coming. Mort Mills' most indelible screen moments occured in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), wherein he portrayed the suspicious highway patrolman who almost catches embezzler Janet Leigh; had he succeeded, she would have spent the night in the pokey rather than the Bates Motel.