Trivia: American actor James Arness had an unremarkable Minneapolis childhood, but his wartime experiences shattered that normality - literally. During the battle of Anzio, Arness' right leg was peppered with machine gun bullets, and when the bones were set they didn't mend properly, leaving him with a slight but permanent limp. The trauma of the experience mellowed into aimlessness after the war. Arness became a "beach bum," lived out of his car, and worked intermittently as a salesman and carpenter. Acting was treated equally lackadaisically, but by 1947 Arness had managed to break into Hollywood on the basis of his rugged good looks and his 6'6" frame. Few of his screen roles were memorable, though one has become an object of cult worship: Arness was cast as the menacingly glowing space alien, described by one character as "an intellectual carrot," in The Thing (1951). For a time it looked as though Arness would continue to flounder in supporting roles, while his younger brother, actor Peter Graves, seemed destined for stardom. John Wayne took a liking to Arness when the latter was cast in Wayne's Big Jim McLain (1953). Wayne took it upon himself to line up work for Arness, becoming one of the withdrawn young actor's few friends. In 1955, Wayne was offered the role of Matt Dillon in the TV version of the popular radio series Gunsmoke. Wayne turned it down but recommended that Arness be cast and even went so far as to introduce him to the nation's viewers in a specially filmed prologue to the first Gunsmoke episode. Truth be told, Arness wasn't any keener than Wayne to be tied down to a weekly series, and as each season ended he'd make noises indicating he planned to leave. This game went on for each of the 20 seasons that Gunsmoke was on the air, the annual result being a bigger salary for Arness, more creative control over the program (it was being produced by his own company within a few years) and a sizeable chunk of the profits and residuals. When Gunsmoke finally left the air in 1975, Arness was the only one of the original four principals (including Amanda Blake, Milburn Stone and Dennis Weaver) still appearing on the series. Arness made plans to take it easy after his two-decade Gunsmoke hitch, but was lured back to the tube for a one-shot TV movie, The Macahans (1976). This evolved into the six-hour miniseries How the West Was Won (1977) which in turn led to a single-season weekly series in 1978. All these incarnations starred Arness, back in the saddle as Zeb Macahan. The actor tried to alter his sagebrush image in a 1981 modern-day cop series, McClain's Law -- which being set in the southwest permitted Arness to ride a horse or two. It appeared, however that James Arness would always be Matt Dillon in the hearts and minds of fans, thus Arness obliged his still-faithful public with three Gunsmoke TV movies, the last one (Gunsmoke: The Last Apache) released in 1992. In between these assignments, James Arness starred in a 1988 TV-movie remake of the 1948 western film classic Red River, in which he filled the role previously played by his friend and mentor John Wayne.

Trivia: Trained as a musician, Virginia Gregg drew her first professional paychecks with the Pasadena Symphony. Gregg was sidetracked into radio in the 1940s, playing acting roles in an abundance of important California-based network programs. Her extensive radio credits include Gunsmoke, Suspense, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, and Richard Diamond. Her first film was 1946's Notorious, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, who last cast Gregg as the voice of "Mother" in his classic chiller Psycho (1960). Virginia Gregg was most closely associated with the output of actor/producer/director Jack Webb: she co-starred in both of Webb's film versions of his popular radio and TV series Dragnet, and guest-starred in virtually every other episode of the 1967-70 Dragnet TV revival.

Trivia: General purpose actor Don Megowan began his acting career in 1951 in Robert Parrish's crime thriller The Mob, playing a beefy longshoreman. Usually playing low-mentality thugs, he made several fleeting appearances in Westerns and crime dramas. Larger roles came his way in Disney productions as Colonel Billy Travis in Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955) and as Marion A. Ross in The Great Locomotive Chase (1956), and starting in the second half of 1950s he also became a familiar figure to fans of horror and science fiction -- although pretty much unrecognizable, Megowan played the title role of the land-bound Gill Man in John Sherwood's The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), and that same year was the star -- this time as the hero, the sheriff trying to understand a series of seemingly random, grisly killings -- in Fred F. Sears' The Werewolf; and in 1962, he was the lead in Wesley Barry's The Creation Of The Humanoids, a script that gave Megowan the largest amount of dialogue of his whole career . On television, Megowan was seen as Captain Huckabee on the 1961 syndicated adventure series The Beachcomber, replacing Adam West, who had been cast in the role in the pilot episode. And he later played Lucille Ball's boyfriend, whose indisposition gets her Lucy Carmichael involved in stuntman work, on The Lucy Show. One of the actor's more enjoyable assignments during the '70s was as the gum-chewing desperado in Mel Brooks' Western spoof Blazing Saddles (1974). Megowan died of throat cancer in 1981.

Trivia: Primarily a television actor, six-foot, six-inch tall Dick Peabody will be best remembered for his portrayal of Littlejohn, an enormous and innocent farmhand, on the TV series Combat that aired in the 1960s. Peabody's contributions to film were not as great, with only a handful of appearances. In late 1999, Peabody died from prostate cancer, at the age of 74.

Trivia: Milburn Stone got his start in vaudeville as one-half of the song 'n' snappy patter team of Stone and Strain. He worked with several touring theatrical troupes before settling down in Hollywood in 1935, where he played everything from bits to full leads in the B-picture product ground out by such studios as Mascot and Monogram. One of his few appearances in an A-picture was his uncredited but memorable turn as Stephen A. Douglas in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln. During this period, he was also a regular in the low-budget but popular Tailspin Tommy series. He spent the 1940s at Universal in a vast array of character parts, at one point being cast in a leading role only because he physically matched the actor in the film's stock-footage scenes! Full stardom would elude Stone until 1955, when he was cast as the irascible Doc Adams in Gunsmoke. Milburn Stone went on to win an Emmy for this colorful characterization, retiring from the series in 1972 due to ill health.

Trivia: Charming, handsome, and easy-going, lead actor and megastar Burt Reynolds entered the world on February 11, 1936. He attended Florida State University on a football scholarship, and became an all-star Southern Conference halfback, but - faced with a knee injury and a debilitating car accident - switched gears from athletics to college drama. In 1955, he dropped out of college and traveled to New York, in search of stage work, but only turned up occasional bit parts on television, and for two years he had to support himself as a dishwasher and bouncer.In 1957, Reynolds's ship came in when he appeared in a New York City Center revival of Mister Roberts; shortly thereafter, he signed a television contract. He sustained regular roles in the series Riverboat, Gunsmoke, Hawk, and Dan August. Although he appeared in numerous films in the 1960s, he failed to make a significant impression. In the early '70s, his popularity began to increase, in part due to his witty appearances on daytime TV talk shows. His breakthrough film, Deliverance (1972), established him as both a screen icon and formidable actor. That same year, Reynolds became a major sex symbol when he posed as the first nude male centerfold in the April edition of Cosmopolitan. He went on to become the biggest box-office attraction in America for several years - the centerpiece of films such as Hustle (1975), Smokey and the Bandit (1977) (as well as its two sequels), The End (1978), Starting Over (1979), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), and The Man Who Loved Women (1983). However, by the mid-'80s, his heyday ended, largely thanks to his propensity for making dumb-dumb bumper-smashing road comedies with guy pals such as Hal Needham (Stroker Ace, The Cannonball Run 2). Reynolds's later cinematic efforts (such as the dismal Malone (1987)) failed to generate any box office sizzle, aside from a sweet and low-key turn as an aging career criminal in Bill Forsyth's Breaking In (1989). Taking this as a cue, Reynolds transitioned to the small screen, and starred in the popular sitcom Evening Shade, for which he won an Emmy. He also directed several films, created the hit Win, Lose or Draw game show with friend Bert Convy, and established the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater in Florida. In the mid-'90s, Reynolds ignited a comeback that began with his role as a drunken, right-wing congressman in Andrew Bergman's Striptease (1996). Although the film itself suffered from critical pans and bombed out at the box office, the actor won raves for his performance, with many critics citing his comic interpretation of the role as one of the film's key strengths. His luck continued the following year, when Paul Thomas Anderson cast him as porn director Jack Horner in his acclaimed Boogie Nights. Reynolds would go on to earn a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, and between the twin triumphs of Striptease and Nights, critics read the resurgence as the beginning of a second wind in the Deliverance star's career, ala John Travolta's turnaround in 1994's Pulp Fiction. But all was not completely well chez Burt. A nasty conflict marred his interaction with Paul Thomas Anderson just prior to the release of Boogie Nights. It began with Reynolds's disastrous private screening of Nights; he purportedly loathed the picture so much that he phoned his agent after the screening and fired him. When the Anderson film hit cinemas and became a success d'estime, Reynolds rewrote his opinion of the film and agreed to follow Anderson on a tour endorsing the effort, but Reynolds understandably grew peeved when Anderson refused to let him speak publicly. Reynolds grew so infuriated, in fact, that he refused to play a role in Anderson's tertiary cinematic effort, 1999's Magnolia. Reynolds's went on to appear in a big screen adatpation of The Dukes of Hazzard as Boss Hogg, and later returned to drama with a supporting performance in the musical drama Broken Bridges; a low-key tale of a fading country music star that served as a feature debut for real-life country music singer Toby Kieth. Over the coming years, Reynolds would also enjoy occasional appearances on shows like My Name is Earl and Burn Notice.

Trivia: Born on her family's cattle ranch in Texas, American actress Phyllis Coates left home to attend UCLA. Shortly afterward she secured a dancing job with Ken Murray's Blackouts, a long-running LA-based stage review. She later danced for producer Earl Carroll and in a USO tour of Anything Goes. Through the auspices of her first husband, director Richard Bare, Phyllis entered films in 1948 as leading lady of Warner Bros.' Behind the Eight-Ball short subjects series, playing Mrs. Joe McDoakes (George O'Hanlon). Coates stayed with the Eight-Ball series even after her marriage to Bare ended, and also appeared in supporting parts in such Warners features as Look for the Silver Lining (1949). In 1951, Coates was cast as reporter Lois Lane in Lippert Productions' "B"-feature Superman and the Mole Men, wherein George Reeves played the dual role of Superman and Clark Kent for the first time. This week-long assignment led to both Reeves and Phyllis being cast in the subsequent Superman TV series. While Phyllis thrived on the rigors of the hectic production schedule and was a good friend of Reeves', she was compelled to leave Superman after its first season when a possible starring role in another TV weekly came her way. That project died, but Phyllis remained in films until the early 1960s, mostly in westerns (Marshall of Cedar Creek [1953] and Blood Arrow [1958]) and also as the lead in one of the last Republic serials, Panther Girl of the Kongo (1953). She appeared in quite a few sci-fi and horror films as well; in Invasion USA (1952) one of her fellow cast members was Noel Neill, the actress who'd replaced her as Lois Lane on Superman. Phyllis remained active in television throughout her career, co-starring on the short-lived 1958 sitcom This is Alice and playing good guest roles in a multitude of series like Perry Mason, The Untouchables and The Patty Duke Show. Long in retirement, Phyllis Coates returned to films and TV in the early 1990s; one of her best latter-day roles was on the newest Superman TV incarnation, Lois and Clark where she plays Lois Lane's mother!

Trivia: Gregg Palmer started out as a radio disc jockey, billed under his given name of Palmer Lee. He launched his film career in 1950, usually appearing in Westerns and crime melodramas. During the 1950s, he could most often be seen in such inexpensive sci-fi fare as A Creature Walks Among Us (1956) and Zombies of Moro Tau. Before his retirement in 1983, Gregg Palmer logged in a great many TV credits, including a 13-week stint as a Chicago gunman named Harry in Run Buddy Run (1966).

Trivia: He was born John Williams, but there already was a John Williams in show business (several of them, in fact), so the Canadian-born actor selected John McLiam as his professional moniker. McLiam's man-on-the-street countenance could be molded into a vast array of characterizations, ranging from a cockney low-life (My Fair Lady) to a Southern redneck (Cool Hand Luke). The actor's bland normality was a key factor in his being cast as real-life murder victim Herbert Clutter in 1967's In Cold Blood. John McLiam accepted more TV guest-star assignments than can possibly be listed here; he was also a regular on the weekly series Men From Shiloh (1970) and Two Marriages (1983).

Trivia: A New Mexican of Native American extraction, actor Glenn Strange held down several rough-and-tumble jobs, from deputy sheriff to rodeo rider, before settling on a singing career. He made his radio bow on Los Angeles station KNX (the CBS-owned affiliate) as a member of the Arizona Wranglers singing group. Thanks to his husky physique and plug-ugly features, Strange had no trouble finding work as a stuntman/villain in western films and serials. He also displayed a flair for comedy as the sidekick to singing cowboy Dick Foran in a series of B-sagebrushers of the late '30s. During the war years, Strange became something of a bargain-basement Lon Chaney Jr., playing homicidal halfwits in a handful of horror pictures made at PRC and other low-budget studios. These appearances led to his being cast as the Frankenstein monster in the 1944 Universal programmer House of Frankenstein; he was coached in this role by the "creature" from the original 1931 Frankenstein, Boris Karloff. Given very little to do in House of Frankenstein and the 1945 sequel House of Dracula other than stalk around with arms outstretched at fadeout time, Strange brought none of the depth and pathos to the role that distinguished Karloff's appearances. Strange was shown to better advantage in his last appearance as The Monster in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) where he convincingly menaced the eternally frightened Lou Costello and even indulged in a couple of time-honored "scare" routines, while still remaining in character (Some scenes had to be reshot because Strange couldn't stop laughing at Costello's antics; towards the end of shooting, Strange broke his ankle and had to be replaced in a few shots by Lon Chaney Jr., who was costarring in the film as the Wolf Man). Though typecast as heavies in both movies and television -- he played the hissable Butch Cavendish in the Lone Ranger TV pilot -- Strange was well known throughout Hollywood as a genuine nice guy and solid family man. Glenn Strange's last engagement of note was his 11-year run (1962-73) as Sam, the Long Branch bartender on TV's Gunsmoke.