Trivia: The son of a New York University professor of marketing, American actor James Drury spent his youth dividing his time between Manhattan and Oregon, where his mother ran a ranch. At age 8, Drury made his stage debut as King Herod-- crepe beard and all--in a Christmas production at a Greenwich Village settlement house. Sidelined by polio at age 10, Drury became a voracious reader, often acting out the characters in the books. At NYU, Drury dove full-force into acting, developing his craft to such an extent that in 1954 he was signed by MGM. His film roles were of the "other guy in the room" calibre (Forbidden Planet [1956]), so Drury's contract lapsed, after which he spent time at 20th Century-Fox in support of Pat Boone (Bernardine [1957]) and Elvis Presley (Love Me Tender [1958]). In 1958, Drury was cast by Screen Gems studios in a TV pilot film based on the Owen Wister story The Virginian. It didn't sell, but in 1962 Universal optioned the rights to The Virginian, bringing Drury in along for the ride. He spent the next nine years in The Virginian, during which time Drury's reputation for recalcitrance on the set and reluctance to reveal anything of himself in interviews earned him the soubriquet "The Garbo of the Sagebrush" (a nickname bestowed by Drury's father!) James Drury wasn't seen much after The Virginian, though he did show up on the small screen as the lead in an Emergency clone titled Firehouse, which ran on the ABC network for eight months in 1974.

Trivia: Raw-boned blonde leading man Doug McClure came to films in 1957, but it was television that made him a star. He played secondary roles on such MCA series as The Overland Trail (1960) and Checkmate (1961-62) before striking paydirt as Trampas on the long-running (1962-71) western series The Virginian. During his first flush of stardom, McClure played leads in two Universal remakes, Beau Geste (1966) and The King's Pirate (the 1967 remake of Errol Flynn's Against All Flags). He also dashed through a trio of British-filmed Edgar Rice Burroughs derivations, The Land That Time Forgot (1974), At the Earth's Core (1976) and The People That Time Forgot (1977). He perpetuated his athletic, devil-may-care image into his brief 1975 TVer, Search (1975). In the late 1980s, Doug McClure reemerged as an agreeable comic actor, playing an Eastwoodish movie-star-cum-small-town-mayor in the syndicated sitcom Out of This World (1987-88).

Trivia: A product of the Brooklyn parochial school system, James Farentino studied for a theatrical career at AADA. Farentino made his Broadway debut in 1961 as Pedro in Tennessee Williams's Night of the Iguana. Though most of his subsequent professional time would be taken up by film and TV work, he would make frequent return visits to the stage, winning a Theatre World Award for his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in a mid-1970s revival of another Williams piece, A Streetcar Named Desire. After an inauspicious movie bow in 1963's Psychomania, Farentino was signed by Universal, playing second leads in such films as The War Lord (1965) The Pad: And How to Use It (1966) and Rosie (1968). While still under the Universal banner, he starred in a brace of TV series, playing Neil Darrell in The Lawyers (1969-72) and high-profile private eye Jefferson Keyes in Cool Million (1972). He went on to star as copter jockey Frank Chaney in Blue Thunder (1984), Mary Tyler Moore's boss Frank DeMarco in Mary (1985) and Julie Andrews' veterinarian husband Sam McGuire in Julie (1992); one of his more famous weekly TV assignments was as Dr. Nick Toscannini during the first season of Dynasty (1981). Of his many TV-movie roles, several are standouts, among them the apostle Peter in Jesus of Nazaraeth (1977) and Juan Peron in Evita Peron (1985). James Farentino was formerly married to actress Michele Lee. Farentino died in early 2012 at age 73.

Trivia: Canadian character actor Donnelly Rhodes made his first American film appearance in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1970). Rhodes gained a daytime-drama following as Phillip Chancellor on The Young and the Restless. In TV's nighttime hours, he was seen as Dutch in the serial spoof Soap (1977-81), as Charlie in Report to Murphy (1982) and as the father of twins Jean and Liz Sagal in Double Trouble (1984). From 1985 to 1992, Donnelly Rhodes starred as Grant "Doc" Roberts in Danger Bay, a Canadian-based adventure series which ran in the U.S. on the Disney Channel cable service.

Trivia: Discovered by famed African-American comedian Bert Williams, actor Jay C. Flippen attained his first Broadway stage role in 1920's Broadway Brevities. Entertainers of the period were expected to sing, dance, act and clown with equal expertise, and the young Flippen was no slouch in any of these categories. He not only shared billing with such stage luminaries as Jack Benny and Texas Guinan, but he boned up on his ad-lib skills as a radio announcer for the New York Yankees games. At one time president of the American Guild of Variety Artists, Flippen did as many benefits for worthy causes as he did paid performances and worked tirelessly in all showbiz branches: movies, stage (including the touring version of Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin), radio (he was one of the first game show emcees) and even early experimental television broadcasts. After several years of alternating between raspy-voiced villains and lovable "Pop"- type characters in films, Flippen increased his fan following with a supporting role as C.P.O. Nelson on the 1962 sitcom Ensign O'Toole, which, though it lasted only one network season, was a particular favorite in syndicated reruns. In 1964, Flippen suffered a setback when a gangrenous leg had to be amputated. Choosing not to be what he described as "a turnip," Jay C. Flippen continued his acting career from a wheelchair, performing with vim and vinegar in films and on television until his death.

Trivia: Actors Studio-graduate Michael J. Pollard was first thrust upon the public as Maynard G. Krebs' funky cousin on the 1959 TV series Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959). The leprechaunish Pollard had been hired as a potential replacement for Bob Denver (aka Maynard), who'd been drafted; but when Denver flunked his physical and returned to the series, Pollard was shown the exit. He went on to co-star in the 1961 musical Bye Bye Birdie (1961), then made his film debut in Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962). Pollard earned an Oscar nomination for his performance as the moronic C.W.Moss in Bonnie and Clyde (1967); he followed this triumph by sharing co-star billing with Robert Redford in Little Fauss & Big Halsey (1969), and by essaying the role of Billy the Kid in Dirty Little Billy (1972). In all the above-mentioned films, as well as his many TV appearances in series like The Andy Griffith Show, Lost in Space and Star Trek, Pollard essentially played the same character: a slow-witted, stammering child-man, ever out of step with an unfeeling world. Audiences eventually tired of Pollard's one-note characterizations. No longer a star, Michael J. Pollard has continued accepting sizeable character roles in films, and was seen as Leonard the handyman in the 1986 TV sitcom Leo and Liz in Beverly Hills. In 1990, Michael J. Pollard was reunited with his Bonnie and Clyde co-star Warren Beatty in Dick Tracy, playing the amusing supporting part of police wiretapper Bug Bailey (also in the Tracy cast was another B&C alumnus, Estelle Parsons).

Trivia: Despite over four decades in the industry, actress Peggy Lipton is best known for a role she played in 1968, that of undercover cop Julie Barnes in The Mod Squad (1968-1973). However, prior to life as Julie Barnes, Lipton had participated in The John Forsythe Show (1965-1966) and starred alongside Kurt Russell in Mosby's Marauders, a critically praised three-part tale from The Wonderful World of Disney series. After the finale of The Mod Squad (and the reunion in 1979's The Return of the Mod Squad), Lipton played supporting roles in Purple People Eater and Keenen Ivory Wayans' I'm Gonna Git You Sucka! (both 1988). Before long, another television role launched Lipton's name back into the mainstream -- David Lynch's surreal drama series Twin Peaks (1990-1991), which featured Lipton in the role of Norma Jennings.Lipton reprised her Twin Peaks role in 1992, though, unlike The Return of the Mod Squad, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was a feature-film prequel to the television series. Lipton continued to make sporadic appearances in film and television throughout the '90s -- she had decided to focus most of her attention on raising a family rather than pursuing acting full-time -- and played a small, supporting role in Kevin Costner's ill-conceived film The Postman in 1997. In 2000, Lipton worked with Drew Barrymore and Jennifer Jason Leigh in director Tamra Davis' coming-of-age drama Skipped Parts, and went on to perform in Michael and Mark Polish's Jackpot in 2001. She also turned up on the popular spy series Alias in 2004 as the duplicitous mother of the similarly deceptive government agent Lauren Reed (Melissa George). Peggy Lipton was married to composer/producer Quincy Jones from 1974-1989, and the former couple have two daughters together.

Trivia: American character actor of stage, screen, and TV Lee J. Cobb, born Leo Jacob or Jacoby, was usually seen scowling and smoking a cigar. As a child, Cobb showed artistic promise as a virtuoso violinist, but any hope for a musical career was ended by a broken wrist. He ran away from home at age 17 and ended up in Hollywood. Unable to find film work there, he returned to New York and acted in radio dramas while going to night school at CCNY to learn accounting. Returning to California in 1931, he made his stage debut with the Pasadena Playhouse. Back in New York in 1935, he joined the celebrated Group Theater and appeared in several plays with them, including Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy. He began his film career in 1937, going on to star and play supporting roles in dozens of films straight through to the end of his life. Cobb was most frequently cast as menacing villains, but sometimes appeared as a brooding business executive or community leader. His greatest triumph on stage came in the 1949 production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman in which he played the lead role, Willy Loman (he repeated his performance in a 1966 TV version). Between 1962-66, he also appeared on TV in the role of Judge Garth in the long-running series The Virginian. He was twice nominated for "Best Supporting Actor" Oscars for his work in On the Waterfront (1954) and The Brothers Karamazov (1958).

Trivia: Endearing herself to television audiences as the devoted sitcom wife of Robert Young on Father Knows Best, petite brunette actress Jane Wyatt also essayed frequent big-screen roles highlighted by memorable performances in such films as Lost Horizon (1937), in which she plays Sondra, the lover of Robert Conway (Ronald Colman). Born in Campgaw, NJ, on August 12, 1910, to an investment banker father and a drama critic mother, and raised as a Manhattanite from age three, Wyatt received her formal education at the Chapin School and -- very briefly -- at New York City's Barnard College, where she spent two listless years. Following the irresistible call of the stage, Wyatt bucked university life in favor of honing her acting skills at Berkshire Playhouse in the western Massachusetts community of Stockbridge. Shortly after this, she accepted a position as understudy to Rose Hobart in a Broadway production of Trade Winds. Universal soon took note of Wyatt's talents and offered her a film role, in Frankenstein director James Whale's One More River (1934). Wyatt embarked on a lucrative screen career following her impressive debut, and many consider the performance in Lost Horizon her crowning achievement, though additional cinematic work throughout the 1940s proved both steady and rewarding. Following memorable performances in Clifford Odets' None But the Lonely Heart (1944) (alongside Cary Grant) and Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement (1947, with Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire), the now-established actress transitioned smoothly into television in the early '50s, given her standing role as the matriarch of the Anderson family (mother of Bud, Princess, and Kitten, and wife of Jim) on the long-running CBS sitcom Father Knows Best. Wyatt deservedly won three Emmys for that role, and remained with the program over the course of its six-year run of original episodes. (Riding the crest of high ratings, CBS stretched prime-time reruns into the spring of 1963.) This marked the only major recurring prime-time role of Wyatt's career, though (alongside the work of others such as Barbara Billingsley and Harriet Nelson) it did much to establish the now-iconic image of the "archetypal 1950s sitcom mother," and earned the actress a beloved spot in American pop-culture history. In addition to this, Wyatt made occasional appearances, during the Father Knows Best run, on a dramatic anthology series headlined by her small-screen husband, Robert Montgomery Presents (NBC, 1950-1957). Six years after new episodes of Father wrapped, Star Trek landed on NBC, and Wyatt turned up occasionally on that program, as Mr. Spock's mother, Amanda Spock. She also made a guest appearance, alongside the late Bob Cummings, on the early-'70s comedic anthology series Love, American Style (the two play parents who are overanxious about their daughter's decision to embark on a European "swingers' holiday" with a boyfriend). If the preponderance of Wyatt's roles in the '70s, '80s, and '90s were largely supporting turns, it certainly said nothing about the actress' talent. She remained in the public eye as a fixture of such made-for-television features as You'll Never See Me Again (1973) and Amelia Earhart (1976). Though she entered semi-retirement in the late '70s, Wyatt later appeared (very infrequently) as an occasional supporting character in television's St. Elsewhere and reprised her role as Spock's mother in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).On October 20, 2006, after years of inactivity, Jane Wyatt died of natural causes in her sleep, at her home in Bel Air, CA. She was 96.