Trivia: Actor/dancer Ken Berry was brought to Broadway as a member of the Billy Barnes revue. His early TV work included the recurring role of Woody the bellhop on The Ann Sothern Show (1959-60). In 1965, Berry was cast in his most celebrated TV role: bumbling Cavalry captain Wilton Parmenter on F Troop (1965-67). When Andy Griffith decided to leave his highly rated TV sitcom in 1968, the series' title was changed to Mayberry RFD and Berry was cast in the central role of town-councillor Sam Jones. CBS' peremptory cancellation of Mayberry in 1971 left Berry in a financial bind, compelling him to accept a hosting stint on a doomed-from-the-start variety series, Ken Berry's WOW (1972). More recently, Berry has been seen as Vint Harper on the well-distributed Vicki Lawrence sitcom Mama's Family (1983-1989). For many years, Ken Berry was married to dancer/comedienne Jackie Joseph, of Little Shop of Horrors fame.

Trivia: Forrest Tucker occupied an odd niche in movies -- though not an "A" movie lead, he was, nonetheless, a prominent "B" picture star and even a marquee name, who could pull audiences into theaters for certain kinds of pictures. From the early/mid-1950s on, he was a solid presence in westerns and other genre pictures. Born Forrest Meredith Tucker in Plainfield, Indiana in 1919, he was bitten by the performing bug early in life -- he made his debut in burlesque while he was still under-age. Shortly after graduating from high school in 1937, he enlisted in the United States Army, joining a cavalry unit. Tucker next headed for Hollywood, where his powerful build and six-foot-four frame and his enthusiasm were sufficient to get him a big-screen debut in The Westerner (1940), starring Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan. Signed to Columbia Pictures, he mostly played anonymous tough-guy roles over the next two years, primarily in B pictures, before entering the army in 1943. Resuming his career in 1946, he started getting bigger roles on a steady basis in better pictures, and in 1948 signed with Republic Pictures. He became a mainstay of that studio's star roster, moving up to a co-starring role in Sands Of Iwo Jima (1949), which also brought him into the professional orbit of John Wayne, the movie's star. Across the early/middle 1950s, Tucker starred in a brace of action/adventure films and westerns, alternating between heroes and villains, building up a significant fan base. By the mid-1950s, he was one of the company's top box-office draws. As it also turned out, Tucker's appeal was international, and he went to England in the second half of the decade to play starring roles in a handful of movies. At that time, British studios such as Hammer Films needed visiting American actors to boost the international appeal of their best productions, and Tucker fulfilled the role admirably in a trio of sci-fi/horror films: The Crawling Eye, The Cosmic Monsters, and The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas. Part of Tucker's motivation for taking these roles, beyond the money, he later admitted, was his desire to sample the offerings of England's pubs -- Tucker was a two-fisted drinker and, in those days, was well able to handle the effects of that activity so that it never showed up on-screen. And he ran with the opportunity afforded by those three science fiction movies -- each of those films, he played a distinctly different role, in a different way, but always with a certain fundamental honesty that resonated with audiences. When he returned to Hollywood, he was cast as Beauregard Burnside in Auntie Mame (1958), which was the top-grossing movie of the year. Then stage director Morton De Costa, seeing a joyful, playful romantic huckster in Tucker (where others had mostly seen an earnest tough-guy), picked him to star as Professor Harold Hill in the touring production of The Music Man -- Tucker played that role more than 2000 times over the years that followed. He was also the star of the 1964 Broadway show Fair Game For Lovers (in a cast that included Leo Genn, Maggie Hayes, and a young Alan Alda), which closed after eight performances. The Music Man opened a new phase for Tucker's career. The wily huckster became his image, one that was picked up by Warner Bros.' television division, which cast him in the role of Sgt. Morgan O'Rourke, the charmingly larcenous post-Civil War cavalry soldier at the center of the western/spoof series F-Troop. That series only ran for two seasons, but was in syndicated reruns for decades afterward, and though Tucker kept his hand in other media -- returning to The Music Man and also starring in an unsold pilot based on the movie The Flim-Flam Man (taking over the George C. Scott part), it was the part of O'Rourke with which he would be most closely identified for the rest of his life. He did occasionally take tougher roles that moved him away from the comedy in that series -- in one of the better episodes of the series Hondo, entitled "Hondo And The Judas", he played Colonel William Clark Quantrill very effectively. At the end of the decade, he returned to straight dramatic acting, most notably in the John Wayne western Chisum, in which he played primary villain Lawrence Murphy. That same year, he appeared in a challenging episode of the series Bracken's World entitled "Love It Or Leave It, Change It Or Lose It", playing "Jim Grange," a sort of film-a-clef version of John Wayne -- a World War II-era film star known for his patriotism, Grange is determined to express his political views while working alongside a young film star (portrayed by Tony Bill) who is closely associated with the anti-war movement. Tucker continued getting television work and occasional film roles, in addition to returning to the straw-hat circuit, mostly as Professor Harold Hill. None of his subsequent series lasted very long, but he was seldom out of work, despite a drinking problem that did worsen significantly during his final decade. In his final years, he had brought that under control, and was in the process of making a comeback -- there was even talk of an F-Troop revival in film form -- when he was diagnosed with lung cancer and emphysema. He died in the fall of 1986 at age 67.

Trivia: The younger brother of film star Robert Mitchum, American actor John Mitchum shared his family's Depression-era travails before striking out on his own. As brother Robert's star ascended in the mid '40s, John remained his elder sibling's boon companion, severest critic and drinking buddy. In later years, John was a convivial anecdotal source for books and articles about Bob, each reminiscense becoming more colorful as it was repeated for the next interview. After holding down a variety of jobs, John decided to give acting a try as a result of hearing Bob's tales of Hollywood revelry; too heavyset to be a leading man, John became a reliable character actor, usually in military or western roles. He frequently had small parts in his brother's starring films, notably One Minute to Zero (1951) and The Way West (1967). Most of John's movie work was done outside Robert's orbit, however, in such films as Cattle King (1963) and Paint Your Wagon (1970). Perhaps John Mitchum's best screen role was as Goering in the 1962 biopic Hitler; he may have been utterly opposed ideologically to the late German field marshal, but John certainly filled the costume.

Trivia: Few actors were more beloved of audiences across multiple generations -- and from more different fields of entertainment -- than Edward Everett Horton. For almost 70 years, his work delighted theatergoers on two coasts (and a lot of the real estate in between) and movie audiences, first in the silents and then in the talkies, where he quickly became a familiar supporting player and then a second lead, often essaying comically nervous "fuddy-duddy" parts, and transcended the seeming limitations of character acting to rival most of the leading men around him in popularity; he subsequently moved into television, both as an actor and narrator, and gained a whole new fandom for his work as the storyteller in the animated series "Fractured Fairy Tales." Edward Everett Horton was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1886 -- when it was a separate city from New York City -- the son of Edward Everett Horton and Isabella Diack Horton. His grandfather was Edward Everett Hale, the author of the story The Man Without a Country. He attended Boys High School and later studied at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and at Oberlin College in Ohio, and Columbia University in Manhattan. His path to graduation was thwarted when he joined the university's drama club -- despite his 6'2" build, his first role had him cast as a woman. He never did graduate from Columbia, but he embarked on a performing career that was to keep him busy for more than six decades. In those days, he also sang -- in a baritone -- and joined the Staten Island-based Dempsey Light Opera Company for productions of Michael Balfe's The Bohemian Girl and Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado. His singing brought him to the Broadway stage as a chorus member, and he subsequently spent three years with the Louis Mann company honing his acting skills while playing in stock -- Horton made his professional acting debut in 1908 with a walk-on role in The Man Who Stood Still. By 1911, he was working steadily and regularly, and often delighting audiences with his comedic talents, and remained with the Mann company for another two years. He was a leading man in the Crescent Theatre stock company, based in Brooklyn, and spent the remainder of the teens playing leading roles in theater companies across the United States, eventually basing himself in Los Angeles. Horton entered movies in 1918, and became well known to screen audiences with his performance in the 1923 version of Ruggles of Red Gap. He was identified almost entirely with comedic work after that, and by the end of the '20s had starring roles in a string of comedic shorts. It was after the advent of sound, however, that he fully hit his stride on the big screen. Horton's first talking feature was The Front Page (1931), directed by Lewis Milestone, based on the hit play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, in which he played fidgety reporter Roy Bensinger. Starting in the early '20s, Horton based most of his stage work on the West Coast, producing as well as acting. He leased the Majestic Theater in Los Angeles and found success with works such as The Nervous Wreck, in which he worked with Franklin Pangborn, a character actor who would also -- like Horton -- specialize in nervous, fidgety roles (though Pangborn, unlike Horton, never rose beyond character actor and supporting player status in features). In 1932, he leased the Hollywood Playhouse, which he subsequently operated for a season starring in Benn Wolfe Levy's Springtime for Henry, in which he performed more than 3000 times, making enough money from that play alone to buy his summer home in the Adirondacks. Horton fit in his movie work in between productions of Springtime for Henry (which was filmed in 1934, without Horton), and was always in demand. Amid his many roles over the ensuing decade, Horton worked in a half-dozen of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals at RKO. His other notable roles onscreen during the 1930s included a portrayal of The Mad Hatter in the 1933 Alice in Wonderland, and a neurotic paleontologist (who first appears disguised as a woman) in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937). He worked in at least six movies a year from the early '30s through the end of the 1940s, and there were occasional serious variations in his roles -- Horton played an unusually forceful part in Douglas Sirk's Summer Storm (1944), and he delivered a comedic tour de force (highlighted by a delightful scene with Carmen Miranda) in Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here (1943). Horton kept busy for more than 60 years, and not just in acting -- along with his brother George he bought up property in the San Fernando Valley from the 1920s onward, eventually assembling Beleigh Acres, a 23-acre development where he lived with his mother (who passed away at age 102). His hobbies included antiques, and at the time of his death in 1970, he had a collection with an estimated value of a half million dollars. He was busy on television throughout the 1950s and '60s, not only in onscreen work but also voice-overs for commercials, and he even hosted the Westminster Kennel Club dog show at Madison Square Garden. Horton was a regular cast member on the comedy Western series F Troop, playing Roaring Chicken (also referred to as Running Chicken), the Hekawi indian tribe medicine man. But his most enduring work from the 1960s was as the narrator of "Fractured Fairy Tales," the Jay Ward-produced co-feature to Rocky & Bullwinkle, in which he was prominently billed in the opening credits of every episode. That engagement endeared him to millions of baby boomers and their parents, and his work in those cartoons continues to gain Horton new fans four decades after his death. He grew frail in appearance during the 1960s, and was not averse to playing off of that reality on series such as Dennis the Menace, where he did a guest-star spot in one episode as Uncle Ned, a health-food and physical-culture fanatic. Horton never married, and shared a home later in life with his sister, Hannabelle Grant. He was hospitalized weeks before his death from cancer in September 1970, and was so busy that during that hospitalization he showed up as a guest star in two episodes of the sitcom The Governor and J.J., His final big-screen appearance was in the Bud Yorkin/Norman Lear comedy Cold Turkey, which wasn't released until the following year.