Trivia: Big, burly Dan Blocker only did a handful of movies in his 17-year acting career, but he became one of the most beloved and popular television stars of the 1960s for his portrayal of Hoss Cartwright on the Western series Bonanza. Weighing 14 pounds at birth, Blocker was the largest baby ever born in Bowie County, TX. At 18, he stood 6'3" and weighed close to 300 pounds, and was legendary for his physical prowess. Blocker attended the Texas Military Institute and studied for his B.A. at Sul Ross State College, where he initially majored in athletics. His build accidentally led him to the drama department for a production of Arsenic and Old Lace -- a stage hand was needed who was big and strong enough to quickly remove the dummies representing corpses on the set, between acts. While working on the production, Blocker was bitten by the acting bug and switched his major to drama. He pursued his theatrical aspirations in earnest after graduation, working in one season of summer stock before he was drafted. Blocker served in combat during the Korean War, after which he earned a master's degree, married, moved to Los Angeles, and settled down to raise a family, earning his living as a high school teacher. It was his successful audition for the small role of a cavalry lieutenant on Gunsmoke during the 1956 season, in the episode "Alarm at Pleasant Valley," that rekindled Blocker's interest in an acting career. Over the next three years, he took any work that he could get, on programs like Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, Cheyenne, Tales of Wells Fargo, Zane Grey Theater, Wagon Train, Colt .45, Zorro, Maverick, and Richard Diamond, Private Detective. Blocker also got some movie work, portraying a bartender in the offbeat murder mystery The Girl in Black Stockings and an android in Outer Space Jitters, a very late Three Stooges short. His career took an upturn when he got a guest-starring role in an episode of the series The Restless Gun, starring John Payne, in 1958; his work was good enough to catch the attention of the producer, David Dortort. A year later, Dortort was putting together a new, hour-long Western series called Bonanza and cast Blocker in the role of "Hoss" Cartwright, the big-boned, good-natured middle son in a ranching family near Virginia City, NV, set in the mid- to late 19th century (the time frame of Bonanza was always vague, with stories shifting between the early 1860s to the 1870s and 1880s). Blocker's character's real name, incidentally, was Eric, but Hoss -- a nickname from his mother's Norwegian language that meant "friend" -- was what he was known as to everyone on the series and all viewers. Despite the weaknesses in the scripts during the early seasons, the role was a dream part for the actor, who got a chance to display his gentle, sensitive side as well as his gift for comedy, and also work in a serious dramatic context as well on many occasions, and show off his brute strength as well. It is arguable that Blocker was the most popular member of the cast during the 1960s; he was especially beloved of younger viewers, in part because his character was always very sympathetic to children. In contrast to the other stars of the series, Blocker's big-screen career wasn't halted by his work on Bonanza. He appeared in The Errand Boy, playing himself in an uncredited cameo, and played a role in the Frank Sinatra movie Come Blow Your Horn. Blocker got his first major movie part five years later in the Sinatra film Lady in Cement (1968), playing Waldo Gronsky, a burly, potentially murderous thug who hires private detective Tony Rome (played by Sinatra) to find his missing girlfriend. By the end of the 1960s, Blocker was taken seriously enough as an actor to star in two features, Something for a Lonely Man, a beautiful and poignant Western/comedy-drama, and the broader comedy The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County. Some of Blocker's television appearances separate from Bonanza also reflected his personal side -- his politics were essentially liberal Democratic (in sharp contrast to the conservative Republican sympathies of his co-stars Michael Landon and Lorne Greene), and he appeared in several public service announcements promoting brotherhood and racial tolerance, as well as on one television special that gently satirized American popular culture, starring Henry Fonda. He was also part of the liberal contingent in the 1971 John Wayne-hosted patriotic special Swing Out, Sweet Land. In 1972, Blocker was chosen for what could have been the breakthrough role to a major movie career, when he won the part of Roger Wade, the has-been author in Robert Altman's revisionist detective movie The Long Goodbye. In May of that year, however, he went into the hospital for routine gall bladder surgery, and during recovery he died suddenly of a blood clot in his lung. Sterling Hayden replaced Blocker in The Long Goodbye, which was dedicated to the actor's memory. Blocker's passing, immediately before the shooting for the 1972-1973 season of Bonanza was to begin, signed the death knell for the series. The cast and crew were genuinely shaken by his sudden death; scripts had to be hastily rewritten to explain the passing of Hoss Cartwright, and Blocker's absence and the reason behind it removed any element of lightheartedness that the series had displayed. The final season, despite the best efforts of surviving stars Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, and David Canary, was characterized by grim, downbeat stories and a dark mood that seemed to repel longtime viewers. Coupled with this change in tone, the NBC network moved Bonanza from its longtime Sunday nighttime slot to Tuesday nights, where it died a quick death, cancellation coming halfway through the 1972-1973 season. Blocker left behind a wife and four children, among them actor Dirk Blocker and director/producer David Blocker. He also left behind a legacy of good will that survives to this day, as Bonanza is in perpetual reruns on various cable channels, decades after its cancellation. Significantly, the final season, in which he did not appear, is the body of episodes that is shown (and requested) the least of its 14 years' worth of programs.

Trivia: Pernell Roberts worked such odd jobs as butcher, forest ranger and tombstone-maker while studying acting and singing and scouting around for off-Broadway jobs. Roberts' film debut, in a characteristic Deep Brooder role, was in 1958's Desire Under the Elms. From 1959 through 1966, Roberts co-starred as black-clad, taciturn Adam Cartwright on Bonanza. "Aloof, rebellious and outspoken" was how Bonanza producer David Dotort summed up Roberts, who fought tooth and nail over every real or imagined challenge to his integrity (his biggest beef was that he had to call Lorne Greene "Pa" rather than "Father"). Fed up with what he perceived as the series' declining quality, Roberts left Bonanza in 1966; it was explained to fans that "Adam" had left to study at a European university. Free of his TV series commitment, Roberts returned to his first love, the stage--and also divested himself of the toupee he'd been forced to wear as Adam. The actor played the straw-hat circuit in such musicals as Camelot and The King and I, all the while accepting film and TV roles that came up to his standards. Unfortunately, his stubbornness and standoffishness left a sour taste with co-workers and fans alike, and Roberts was unable to soar to the artistic heights to which he aspired. After years of declaring that he'd never again return to the grind of weekly television, Roberts accepted the role of Dr. "Trapper" John McIntyre, chief of surgery at San Francisco memorial hospital, in the seven-season (1979-86) M*A*S*H spin-off Trapper John MD. In 1991 Pernell Roberts assumed the hosting duties of the TV anthology FBI: The Untold Stories.

Trivia: The son of a Jewish movie-publicist father and an Irish Catholic musical-comedy actress, Michael Landon grew up in a predominantly Protestant New Jersey neighborhood. The social pressures brought to bear on young Michael, both at home and in the schoolyard, led to an acute bedwetting problem, which he would later dramatize (very discreetly) in the 1976 TV movie The Loneliest Runner. Determined to better his lot in life, Landon excelled in high school athletics; his prowess at javelin throwing won him a scholarship at the University of Southern California, but a torn ligament during his freshman year ended his college career. Taking a series of manual labor jobs, Landon had no real direction in life until he agreed to help a friend audition for the Warners Bros. acting school. The friend didn't get the job, but Landon did, launching a career that would eventually span nearly four decades. Michael's first film lead was in the now-legendary I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), widely derided at the time but later reassessed as one of the better examples of the late-'50s "drive-in horror" genre. The actor received his first good reviews for his performance as an albino in God's Little Acre. This led to his attaining the title role in 1959's The Legend of Tom Dooley, which in turn was instrumental in his being cast as Little Joe Cartwright on the popular TV western Bonanza. During his fourteen-year Bonanza stint, Landon was given the opportunity to write and direct a few episodes. He carried over these newfound skills into his next TV project, Little House on the Prairie, which ran from 1974 to 1982 (just before Little House, Landon made his TV-movie directorial bow with It's Good to Be Alive, the biopic of baseball great Roy Campanella). Landon also oversaw two spinoff series, Little House: The New Beginning (1982-83) and Father Murphy (1984). Landon kept up his career momentum with a third long-running TV series, Highway to Heaven (1984-89) wherein the actor/producer/director/writer played guardian angel Jonathan Smith. One of the most popular TV personalities of the '70s and '80s, Landon was not universally beloved by his Hollywood contemporaries, what with his dictatorial on-set behavior and his tendency to shed his wives whenever they matured past childbearing age. Still, for every detractor, there was a friend, family member or coworker who felt that Landon was the salt of the earth. In early 1991, Landon began work on his fourth TV series, Us, when he began experiencing stomach pains. In April of that same year, the actor was informed that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. The courage and dignity with which Michael Landon lived his final months on earth resulted in a public outpouring of love, affection and support, the like of which was seldom witnessed in the cynical, self-involved '90s. Michael Landon died in his Malibu home on July 1, 1991, with his third wife Cindy at his side.

Trivia: In British films from her teens, actress Patricia Medina came to Hollywood in the company of her first husband, actor Richard Greene, in 1946. Invited to film a screen test at MGM by studio president Louis B. Mayer, the raven-haired actress was signed to a contract -- then promptly ignored when Mayer left the studio on an extended business trip. Spending much of her MGM contract on loan-out, Medina appeared in 20th Century-Fox's Moss Rose (1948) and The Foxes of Harrow (1948), and at Universal in Francis (1950) and Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950). With the 1951 Columbia quickie The Magic Carpet, Medina established herself as the queen of the "B" costume pictures. One of her more worthwhile film assignments was as a femme fatale in Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin (1955). She was also an impressive wicked queen in Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961), and surprisingly adept at portraying a predatory lesbian in The Killing of Sister George (1968). On television, Medina guest-starred on such series as Thriller, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Man From UNCLE, usually as black-widow villainesses. Patricia Medina is the widow of actor Joseph Cotten, whom she married in 1960.

Trivia: Sebastian Cabot was one of the most recognizable acting talents ever to come out of England, a familiar and popular supporting player in movies and a star of American television for much of the last two decades of his life. For an actor who specialized in elegant and upper-class, educated roles, he was, ironically, a Cockney, born Charles Sebastian Thomas Cabot in London in July 1918, within the sound of the bells of St. Mary Le Bow Church. What's more, he came to an acting career fairly late -- and by sheer chance. When his father's business failed, Cabot left school at the age of 14 and began working as a garage helper, the first of many menial jobs. (Well into his fifties, his first love was cars and tinkering with them and their engines.) Cabot never had another day of formal education, and later worked as a chef -- which help precipitate his growth to 260 pounds -- and spent three years as a professional wrestler in London before World War II, an activity ended by an injury. It was while working as a driver for actor Frank Pettingell that Cabot first thought of acting as a career. Later, he bluffed his way into acting jobs by claiming that he'd performed in various roles that he'd heard discussed by his former boss and others while driving them around. He'd also picked up enough of the jargon of experienced actors and enough knowledge to bluff his way through small roles that he didn't keep for long. Along the way, however, he picked up more of what he needed, and bigger parts and longer professional relationships followed. Cabot got some extra work in films, started doing a lot of radio, and entertained the troops during World War II. When the war ended, he made his London debut in 1945, at age 27, in A Bell for Adano, and worked for the BBC as an expert in dialects. He was in John Gielgud's company when it brought Restoration comedy to the New York stage in 1947, and made his television debut on the same tour, playing a French schoolmaster in Topaz for CBS's Studio One, his first contact with the network that would make him a star more than a decade later. He first grew his familiar beard for a role in an Italian movie that was never produced, but the dignified, intense appearance that it gave him got Cabot the part of Lord Capulet in a mid-'50s film Romeo and Juliet and helped him secure the role of Porthos in the European-produced TV series The Three Musketeers, though to American filmgoers he was probably most familiar during those years for his appearances in such large-scale MGM productions as Richard Thorpe's Ivanhoe and Vincente Minnelli's Kismet, portraying the Grand Vizier in the latter. It was on American television in the '60s that Cabot established the persona that would make him a star -- but also leave him typecast. In 1960, he became the star, alongside Anthony George and Doug McClure, of a very cerebral suspense program called Checkmate (created by renowned mystery author Eric Ambler), which was about a firm of private investigators who specialize in preventing crime. As Dr. Carl Hyatt, Cabot was the program's rotund, dignified, Oxford-educated criminologist; the series ran two seasons. Around this same time, the actor also had major starring and supporting roles in such movies as The Time Machine (1960) and Twice Told Tales (1962). By then, he'd given up the stage in favor of film and TV work, enjoying a wide diversity of roles. One of his more difficult parts during this period was his guest appearance on The Twilight Zone in the 1960 installment "A Nice Place to Visit." He played Mr. Pip, a kind of tour guide from beyond the mortal veil who proves to have some unexpected angles to his character. Dressed in white and sporting his hair (including his distinguished beard) dyed white, Cabot carried the whole episode in tandem with Larry Blyden as the object of his attentions, a lately deceased criminal. Unfortunately, the dye-job sidelined the actor from other work for months until his natural color returned, though he was able to further cement his familiarity by becoming a regular on the celebrity game show Stump the Stars. In 1965, Cabot was approached with the script for the pilot of a proposed series called Family Affair. He didn't want to do it, and didn't care for the writing or his part -- a stereotypical, staid, dignified English butler -- but the money being offered for the pilot was better than decent, so he reluctantly agreed. The series sold, and for the next five seasons he endeared himself to a generation of viewers as the reserved, well-spoken Giles French (usually referred to as Mr. French), coping with the intrusion of three orphaned children on his employer's bachelor paradise. Although he did his best to bring a certain droll humor to the role, and the series did make him a star, Cabot became bored with the role and the show very early. In an interview done soon after it ended, he confided that both he and Brian Keith (the series' adult lead) were bored to the point of exhaustion for the last two seasons, though a new contract that he signed in the middle of the run also raised Cabot's pay to such a level that he was able to pick and choose his roles once the show had ended. He did talk shows and even a game show or two, but as an actor, in order to avoid being further typecast, he deliberately chose parts that were as different as possible from that of Mr. French. The best of those were his portrayal of the brutal spy master in a pair of made-for-TV movies directed by Roy Ward Baker and produced and written by Jimmy Sangster: The Spy Killer (1969) and Foreign Exchange (1970). He later became the host of the occult-thriller series Ghost Story, and from the late '60s through the mid-'70s, also did a large amount of voice-over work for Disney and other producers of animated features, including The Jungle Book in 1967 and several Winnie the Pooh films. Cabot died in August 1977 after suffering a stroke at his home in British Columbia.

Trivia: Loyola University grad Paul Picerni became an actor at a time when Arrow-collar leading men were giving way to blue-collar realistic types. Picerni never seemed too comfortable with his leading assignments in such films as House of Wax (1953); he appeared more at ease in down-to-earth supporting roles. His latter-day reputation rests on his four-year run as a federal agent on the slam-bang TV series The Untouchables. Paul Picerni is the brother of stunt man and stunt coordinator Charles Picerni.

Trivia: White-haired, patriarchal Canadian actor Lorne Greene attended Queen's University in pursuit of a chemical engineering degree. Amateur college theatricals whetted his appetite for the stage, and upon graduation he decided upon a performing career. He started out on radio, eventually emerging as Canada's top newscaster, designated "the voice of the CBC" (For a while, Greene managed a mail-order announcer's school; one of the "pupils" was Leslie Nielsen). Moving to New York in 1950, Greene became a stage, film and TV actor, co-starring on Broadway with Katherine Cornell in Prescott Proposals and in films with the likes of Paul Newman, Ginger Rogers and Joan Crawford, generally in villainous roles. In 1959, Greene was cast as Ben Cartwright, owner of the Ponderosa ranch and father of three headstrong sons, in TV's Bonanza. He would hold down this job until 1972; during the series' run, Greene unexpectedly became a top-ten recording artist with his hit single "Ringo." Upon the cancellation of Bonanza, Greene vowed he'd retire, but within one year he was playing a private detective on the brief TV weekly Griff. Five years later, he starred on the network sci-fier Battlestar Gallactica. Active as chairman of the National Wildlife Foundation, Greene put forth the organization's doctrine in his popular syndicated TV series Lorne Greene's Last of the Wild. His final weekly television appearance was on the 1980 adventure series Code Red. In 1987, Lorne Greene was all set to recreate Ben Cartwright for the 2-hour TV movie Bonanza: The Next Generation, but he died before shooting started and was replaced by John Ireland.

Trivia: Trained at the Royal Academy of Arts and Music in Vienna, Celia Lovsky gained popularity on the Austrian and German stage in the 1920s. When Hitler assumed power in 1933, Lovsky left for France in the company of her then-husband, actor Peter Lorre. Resettling in Hollywood in 1935, she put her career on hold during her marriage to Lorre, returning to films after their divorce (they remained friends and confidants until Lorre's death in 1964). From 1947 until her retirement in the 1960s, Lovsky was most often seen in maternal roles: George Sanders' mother in Death of a Scoundrel (1956), James Cagney's mother in Man of 1000 Faces (1957), Sal Mineo's mother in The Gene Krupa Story (1959), and so on. Star Trek devotees will remember Celia Lovsky as the Queen of Vulcana in the 1967 episode "Amok Time."

Trivia: Chinese/American actor Victor Sen Yung would always be limited by stereotype in his selection of film roles, but it cannot be denied that he did rather well for himself within those limitations. Billed simply as Sen Yung in his earliest films, the actor was elevated to semi-stardom as Jimmy Chan, number two son of screen sleuth Charlie Chan. He first essayed Jimmy in 1938's Charlie Chan in Honolulu, replacing number one son Keye Luke (both Luke and Yung would co-star in the 1948 Chan adventure The Feathered Serpent). Not much of an actor at the outset, Yung received on-the-job training in the Chan films, and by 1941 was much in demand for solid character roles. With the absence of genuine Japanese actors during World War II (most were in relocation camps), Yung specialized in assimilated, sophisticated, but nearly always villainous Japanese in such films as Across the Pacific (1942). Remaining busy into the '50s, Yung co-starred in both the stage and screen versions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song. His longest-lasting assignment in the '60s was as temperamental cook Hop Sing on the TV series Bonanza. Victor Sen Yung died in his North Hollywood home of accidental asphyxiation at the age of 65.