Trivia: Robert Taylor's cumbersome given name, Spangler Arlington Brugh, can be blamed on his father, a Nebraska doctor. As a high schooler, Taylor participated on the track team, won oratory awards, and played the cello (his first love) in the school band. Attending Pomona College to study music, Taylor became involved in student theatricals, where his uncommonly good looks assured him leading roles. Spotted by an MGM talent scout, the 23-year-old Taylor was signed to a contract with that studio -- though his first film, Handy Andy (1934), would be a loanout to Fox. Taylor was given an extended, publicly distributed "screen test" when he starred in the MGM "Crime Does Not Pay" short, playing a handsome gangster who tries to avoid arrest by purposely disfiguring his face with acid. It was another loanout, to Universal for Magnificent Obsession (1935), that truly put Taylor in the matinee-idol category. Too "pretty" to be taken seriously by the critics, Taylor had to endure some humiliating reviews during his first years in films; even when delivering a perfectly acceptable performance as Armand in Camille (1936), Taylor was damned with faint praise, reviewers commenting on how "surprised" they were that he could act. Nobody liked Taylor but his public and his coworkers, who were impressed by his cooperation and his willingness to give 110 percent of himself and his time on the set. Though never a great actor, Taylor was capable of being a very good one, as even a casual glance at Johnny Eager (1942) and Bataan (1942) will confirm. Taylor's contributions to the war effort included service as an Air Force flight instructor and his narration of the 1944 documentary The Fighting Lady. His film career in eclipse during the 1950s, Taylor starred for three years in the popular weekly police series Robert Taylor's Detectives (1959-1962); and when his friend, Ronald Reagan, opted for a full-time political career in 1965, Taylor succeeded Reagan as host/narrator of the Western anthology Death Valley Days. Robert Taylor was married twice, to actresses Barbara Stanwyck (they remained good friends long after the divorce) and Ursula Theiss.

Trivia: Ohioan Eleanor Parker chose a career in acting when she was still in her teens and began appearing in professional stage productions in Cleveland and at California's Pasadena Playhouse. Signed at Warner Bros. in 1941, the red-haired actress was given the slow buildup in such B's as The Mysterious Doctor before graduating to leads in prestige pictures like Pride of the Marines (1945). As the sluttish Mildred in the 1946 remake Of Human Bondage, Parker was not nearly as effective as Bette Davis in the 1934 version, but she learned from this comparative failure and matured into a versatile actress, equally adept at comedy and heavy dramatics. She was Oscar nominated for Caged (1950), in which she plays an utterly deglamorized prison inmate; Detective Story (1951), wherein, as Kirk Douglas' wife, she agonizingly harbors the secret of a past abortion; and Interrupted Melody (1955), in which she portrays polio-stricken opera diva Marjorie Lawrence. Though she tended toward down-to-earth portrayals, Eleanor could be flamboyantly sexy if required, like her performance as a tempestuous lover in Scaramouche. Still regally beautiful into the 1960s and 1970s, Eleanor Parker was always worth watching no matter if the role was thankless (the Countess in Sound of Music [1965]) or "Baby Jane"-style horrific (the terrorized, elderly cripple in Eye of the Cat [1969]). Parker spent the majority of her career in the 1970s and '80s in TV movies and the occasional guest appearance on television series like Hawaii Five-O and The Love Boat before retiring from acting in 1991. She died in 2013 at age 91.

Trivia: A boy soldier during the Boer War, British actor Victor McLaglen later worked as a prizefighter (once losing to Jack Johnson in six rounds) and a vaudeville and circus performer. He served in World War I as a captain with the Irish Fusiliers and as provost marshal of Baghdad. In the early '20s he broke into British films. He soon moved to Hollywood, where he got lead and supporting roles; his basic screen persona was that of a large, brutish, but soft-hearted man of action. He appeared in many John Ford films, often as a military man. McLaglen made the transition to sound successfully, and for his work in Ford's The Informer (1935), he won the Best Actor Oscar. He remained a busy screen actor until the late '50s. Five of his brothers were also film actors: Arthur, Clifford, Cyril, Kenneth, and Leopold. He was the father of director Andrew V. McLaglen.

Trivia: A former professional baseball player, Jeff Richards displayed his diamond skills to the utmost in his first film, Kill the Umpire (1951), in which he was billed under his given name of Richard Taylor. Richards was subsequently cast in the MGM baseball flicks Angels in the Outfield (1951) and The Big Leaguer (1953), playing the nominal lead in the latter picture. During his MGM years, he also appeared in a number of non-sports efforts; third-billed in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), he expanded his range to include dancing and singing. After starring in the 1958 TV western Jefferson Drum, Jeff Richards faded from public view.

Trivia: Tousle-haired juvenile actor Russ Tamblyn began taking up dancing and acrobatics at the age of six. Needing very little prodding from his parents, the eager Tamblyn embarked on his professional career in the late '40s, performing in radio and Los Angeles musical revues. His first "straight" acting assignment was opposite Lloyd Bridges in the 1947 play Stone Jungle. He entered films in 1948, then was given an "introducing" screen credit for his first starring role in The Kid From Cleveland (1949). Signed by MGM, the young actor changed his billing from Rusty to Russ when cast as an army trainee in 1953's Take the High Ground. Beginning with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Tamblyn became a popular musical star, playing the title role in Tom Thumb (1958) and co-starring as gang leader Riff in the Oscar-winning West Side Story (1961). He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as the teenaged swain of Allison McKenzie (Diane Varsi) in 1958's Peyton Place. By the late '60s, Tamblyn's career had waned, and he was accepting roles in such cheapjack exploitation flicks as Satan's Sadists (1970) and Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971). Russ Tamblyn stuck it out long enough to make a healthy comeback in the late '80s, notably in the role of psychiatrist Lawrence Jacoby on the cult-TV favorite Twin Peaks (1990).

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: The son of a patent medicine manufacturer, American actor Alan Hale chose a theatrical career at a time when, according to his son Alan Hale Jr., boarding houses would post signs reading "No Dogs or Actors Allowed." Undaunted, Hale spent several years on stage after graduating from Philadelphia University, entering films as a slapstick comedian for Philly's Lubin Co. in 1911. Bolstering his acting income with odd jobs as a newspaperman and itinerant inventor (at one point he considered becoming an osteopath!), Hale finally enjoyed a measure of security as a much-in-demand character actor in the 1920s, usually as hard-hearted villains. One of his more benign roles was as Little John in Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922), a role he would repeat opposite Errol Flynn in 1938 and John Derek in 1950. Talkies made Hale more popular than ever, especially in his many roles as Irishmen, blusterers and "best pals" for Warner Bros. Throughout his career, Hale never lost his love for inventing things, and reportedly patented or financed items as commonplace as auto brakes and as esoteric as greaseless potato chips. Alan Hale contracted pneumonia and died while working on the Warner Bros. western Montana (1950), which starred Hale's perennial screen cohort Errol Flynn.

Trivia: American actor John Hudson put in time as a stage performer before heading for Hollywood in the late '40s. Leading roles were few and far between, but Hudson was prominent among the supporting ranks in such films as Bright Victory (1951) (as corporal John Flagg) and Gunfight at the OK Corral (1956) (as Virgil Earp). When he did enjoy a role of significant size, it was usually in a film along the lines of The Screaming Skull (1958), which one could see on "Double Shock Theatre" or purchase on 8-millimeter film in the '60s. Because he worked efficiently and inexpensively, John Hudson was frequently employed by Jack Webb on the various Webb-produced TV series of the '60s and '70s.

Trivia: Few of the performers in director John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941) were as qualified to appear in the film as Rhys Williams. Born in Wales and intimately familiar from childhood with that region's various coal-mining communities, the balding, pug-nosed Williams was brought to Hollywood to work as technical director and dialect coach for Ford's film. The director was so impressed by Williams that he cast the actor in the important role of Welsh prize fighter Dai Bando. Accruing further acting experience in summer stock, Rhys Williams became a full-time Hollywood character player, appearing in such films as Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Spiral Staircase (1946), The Inspector General (1949), and Our Man Flint (1966).

Trivia: After making her first film appearance at age 13, Josephine Hutchinson attended the Cornish School of Music and Drama. A leading Broadway actress of the late 1920s, Hutchinson was most closely associated with the title role in Eva Le Gailliene's Civic Repertory Company production of Alice in Wonderland. Her impeccable credentials notwithstanding, Hutchinson's earliest movie publicity emphasized the fact that hers was the longest name of any movie leading lady. She spent most of her first filmmaking decade at Warner Bros., acting opposite Dick Powell, Pat O'Brien, and, in The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), Paul Muni. At Universal, she played the wife of Basil Rathbone in The Son of Frankenstein (1939), an experience she cherished primarily because of the warm camaraderie between her co-stars Rathbone, Boris Karloff and Lionel Atwill. Josephine Hutchinson worked steadily in films and television into the 1970s, most often playing firm, forceful elderly women.

Trivia: From her earliest stage work onward, American actress Rosemary DeCamp played character roles that belied her youth and fresh-scrubbed attractiveness. On radio, DeCamp developed the vocal timbre that enabled her to portray a rich variety (and age-range) of characters. A peripheral performer on One Man's Family at 21, DeCamp showed up on several radio soap operas and anthologies before settling into the role of secretary Judy Price on the Dr. Christian series in 1937. DeCamp made her film bow in Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941), in which she and most of the cast were required to "age" several decades. With The Jungle Book (1941), the actress played the first of her many mother roles. The most famous examples of DeCamp's specialized film work are Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), in which she was the Irish-American mother of George M. Cohan (James Cagney, who was 14 years her senior), and Rhapsody in Blue (1945), in which she played George Gershwin's Jewish mother (Gershwin was impersonated by Robert Alda, who was one year younger than DeCamp). Even when playing a character close to her own age, such as the Red Cross worker in Pride of the Marines (1945), DeCamp's interest in the leading man (in this case the same-aged John Garfield) was strictly maternal. On television, DeCamp was Peg Riley to Jackie Gleason's Chester A. Riley on the original 1949 run of The Life of Riley. She also played rakish Bob Cummings' levelheaded sister Margaret in Love That Bob (1955-59), and later was seen as Marlo Thomas' mother on That Girl (1966-70). In 1965, Rosemary subbed for her old friend Ronald Reagan as host on Death Valley Days; FCC rules of the time compelled the removal of Reagan's scenes when the show was telecast in California, where he was running for governor. Upon Reagan's election, Robert Taylor took over as host, but DeCamp was installed as permanent commercial spokesperson for 20 Mule Team Borax. Semi-retired for several years, DeCamp reemerged in 1981 for a "de-campy" cameo part in the horror spoof Saturday the 14th.

Trivia: Having served as a bombardier in World War II, Russell Johnson used the GI Bill to finance his studies at the Actor's Lab. Between performing assignments, Johnson supported himself by driving a cab and working the assembly line at a ballpoint pen factory. His first movie break (indeed, his first movie) was in director Paul Henreid's For Men Only (1952), an exposé of barbaric college-fraternity initiation ceremonies; Johnson was suitably loathsome as the sadistic frat leader who is exposed as a snivelling coward in the climax. The balance of the 1950s found Johnson appearing in several fondly remembered science fiction efforts like It Came From Outer Space (1953), This Island Earth (1955), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1956) and The Space Children (1958). He carried over this relationship with the Unreal into his classic performance as an anguished time-traveller desperately attempting to prevent Lincoln's assassination in the 1961 Twilight Zone installment Back There. In 1964, Russell Johnson took his first steps into TV sitcom immortality when he assumed the role of "The Professor" (aka Roy Hinkley) in Gilligan's Island, a role that he'd continued to essay on and off for the next two decades in Gilligan cartoons and TV-movie spin-offs. Johnson worked in television through the 1980s and early '90s before retiring from acting; he died in 2014 at age 89.

Trivia: Born in Germany, actor Sig Rumann studied electro-technology in college before returning to his native Hamburg to study acting. He worked his way up from bits to full leads in such theatrical centers as Stettin and Kiel before serving in World War I. Rumann came to New York in 1924 to appear in German-language plays. He was discovered simultaneously by comedian George Jessel, playwright George S. Kaufman, and critic Alexander Woollcott. He began chalking up an impressive list of stage roles, notably Baron Preysig in the 1930 Broadway production of Grand Hotel (in the role played by Wallace Beery in the 1932 film version). Rumann launched his film career at the advent of talkies, hitting his stride in the mid 1930s. During his years in Hollywood, he whittled down his stage name from Siegfried Rumann to plain Sig Ruman. The personification of Prussian pomposity, Rumann was a memorable foil for the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera (1935), A Day at the Races (1937), and A Night in Casablanca (1946). He also was a favorite of director Ernst Lubitsch, appearing in Ninotchka (1939) as a bombastic Soviet emissary and in To Be or Not to Be (1942) as the unforgettable "Concentration Camp Ehrardt." With the coming of World War II, Ruman found himself much in demand as thick-headed, sometimes sadistic Nazis. Oddly, in The Hitler Gang (1944), Rumann was cast in a comparatively sympathetic role, as the ailing and senile Von Hindenburg. After the war, Rumann was "adopted" by Lubitsch admirer Billy Wilder, who cast the actor in such roles as the deceptively good-natured Sgt. Schultz in Stalag 17 (1953) and a marinet doctor in The Fortune Cookie (1966); Wilder also used Rumann's voice to dub over the guttural intonations of German actor Hubert von Meyerinck in One, Two, Three (1961). In delicate health during his last two decades, Rumann occasionally accepted unbilled roles, such as the kindly pawnbroker in O. Henry's Full House (1952). During one of his heartier periods, he had a recurring part on the 1952 TV sitcom Life with Luigi. Rumann's last film appearance was as a shoe-pounding Russian UN delegate in Jerry Lewis' Way... Way Out (1967).

Trivia: A favorite of producer/director Jack Webb, character actor Ralph Moody was a familiar face to viewers of Dragnet in both its 1950s and 1960s incarnations -- but that would be an unfair (as well as inaccurate) way to describe an actor who amassed hundreds of film and television appearances in barely 20 years of movie and television work. Born in St. Louis, MO, in 1886, Moody didn't make his screen debut until 1948, with a small role in Man Eaters of Kumaon. Already in his sixties, he always looked older than he was, and his craggy features could also impart a fierceness that made him threatening. Although Moody was known for playing kindly or crotchety old men, he occasionally brought that fierceness to bear, as in the Adventures of Superman episode "Test of a Warrior", in which he played the sinister medicine man Okatee. But in between that and dozens of other one-off television assignments, Moody also managed to work in scenes as the coffin-boat skipper in Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street and one of the rescue workers in Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole. Moody was one of those actors who could work quickly and milk a line or a scene for all its emotional worth. What's more, he could do it without over-emoting. He was the kind of character player that directors and producers in budget-conscious television of the 1950s needed. In an episode of Circus Boy, he played a touching scene with a young Micky Dolenz, as an aging railroad engineer introducing the boy to the world of locomotives and trains. After that, Moody got called back to do three more episodes. But it was Jack Webb who really put him to work in Dragnet and many of his other productions, in radio and feature films as well as television. His more memorable appearances on Dragnet included "The Big Producer", as a once-famous movie producer who is reduced to selling pornographic pictures to high-school students, and "The Hammer", from the 1967 revival of the series, in which he portrayed the neighbor of a murder victim. Moody continued working regularly in television until a year before his death in 1971, at age 84. His final appearance was in the Night Gallery episode "The Little Black Bag".

Trivia: One look at Alan Hale Jr. and no one could ever assume he was adopted; Hale Jr. so closely resembled his father, veteran character actor Alan Hale Sr., that at times it appeared that the older fellow had returned to the land of the living. In films from 1933, Alan Jr. was originally cast in beefy, athletic good-guy roles (at 6'3", he could hardly play hen-pecked husbands). After the death of his father in 1950, Alan dropped the "Junior" from his professional name. He starred in a brace of TV action series, Biff Baker USA (1953) and Casey Jones (1957), before his he-man image melted into comedy parts. From 1964 through 1967, Hale played The Skipper (aka Jonas Grumby) on the low-brow but high-rated Gilligan's Island. Though he worked steadily after Gilligan's cancellation, he found that the blustery, slow-burning Skipper had typed him to the extent that he lost more roles than he won. In his last two decades, Alan Hale supplemented his acting income as the owner of a successful West Hollywood restaurant, the Lobster Barrel.

Trivia: Whenever Ellen Corby or Mary Field weren't available to play a timid, spinsterish film role, chances are the part would go to Dorothy Adams. Though far from a shrinking violet in real life, Ms. Adams was an expert at portraying repressed, secretive women, usually faithful servants or maiden aunts. Her best-remembered role was the overly protective maid of Gene Tierney in Laura (1944). Dorothy Adams was the wife of veteran character actor Byron Foulger; both were guiding forces of the Pasadena Playhouse, as both actors and directors. Dorothy and Byron's daughter is actress Rachel Ames, who played Audrey March on TV's General Hospital.

Trivia: American actor Morris Ankrum graduated from the University of Southern California with a law degree, then went on to an associate professorship in economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Here he founded a collegiate little theatre, eventually turning his hobby into a vocation as a teacher and director at the Pasadena Playhouse. (He was much admired by his students, including such future luminaries as Robert Preston and Raymond Burr.) Having already changed his name from Nussbaum to Ankrum for professional reasons, Ankrum was compelled to undergo another name change when he signed a Paramount Pictures contract in the 1930s; in his first films, he was billing as Stephen Morris. Reverting to Morris Ankrum in 1939, the sharp-featured, heavily eyebrowed actor flourished in strong character roles, usually of a villainous nature, throughout the 1940s. By the 1950s, Ankrum had more or less settled into "authority" roles in science-fiction films and TV programs. Among his best known credits in this genre were Rocketship X-M (1950), Red Planet Mars (1952), Flight to Mars (1952), Invaders From Mars (1953) (do we detect a subtle pattern here?), Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and From the Earth to the Moon (1958). The fact that Morris Ankrum played innumerable Army generals was fondly invoked in director Joe Dante's 1993 comedy Matinee: the military officer played by Kevin McCarthy in the film-within-a-film Mant is named General Ankrum.

Trivia: Lanky character actor Tom Fadden first trod the boards when he joined an Omaha stock company in 1915. Fadden went on to tour in top vaudeville with his actress wife Genevieve. From 1932 to 1939, he was seen on Broadway in such productions as Nocturne and Our Town. He made his first film in 1939. Fadden's better-known screen roles include the tollhouse keeper in It's a Wonderful Life (1946)--which led to choice appearances in subsequent Frank Capra productions--and "possessed" townman Ira in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). In 1958, he was seen on a weekly basis as Silas Perry on TV's Cimarron City. Tom Fadden's cinematic swan song was 1977's Empire of the Ants.

Trivia: Enjoying one of the longest screen careers on record, Irish-born, English-reared Al Ferguson became one of the silent era's busiest Western villains, his wolf-like features instantly recognizable to action fans everywhere. According to the actor himself, Ferguson had entered films with the American company as early as 1910, and by 1912, he was appearing in Selig Westerns under the name of "Smoke" Ferguson, often opposite action heroine Myrtle Steadman. In 1920, Ferguson played Hector Dion's henchman in the partially extant The Lost City, the first of more than 40 serials, silent and sound, in which he would appear. Still reasonably good-looking by the early '20s, Ferguson even attempted to become an action star in his own right, producing, directing, and starring in a handful of low-budget Westerns filmed in Oregon and released to the States' Rights market by Poverty Row mogul J. Charles Davis. None of these potboilers, which included The Fighting Romeo (1925), with Ferguson as a ranch foreman rescuing his employer's kidnapped daughter, made him a star, however, and he returned to ply his nefarious trade in low-budget oaters featuring the likes of Bob Steele and Tom Tyler. Today, Ferguson is perhaps best remembered as the main heavy in two Tarzan serials, Tarzan the Mighty (1928) and Tarzan the Tiger (1929), both starring Frank Merrill. The later survives intact and Ferguson emerges as a melodramatic screen villain at the top of his game.Like most of his contemporaries, including Bud Osborne and the silent era James Mason, Al Ferguson saw his roles decrease in stature after the advent of sound. Not because of his Irish accent, which had become all but undetectable, but mainly due to changing acting styles. Ferguson, however, hung in there and appeared in scores of sound Westerns and serials, not exclusively portraying villains but also playing lawmen, peaceful ranchers, townsmen, and even a Native American or two. By the 1950s, he had included television shows such as Sky King to his long resumé, but B-Westerns and serials remained Ferguson's bread and butter, the now veteran actor appearing in the cast of both Perils of the Wilderness (1956) and Blazing the Overland Trail (1956), the final chapter plays to be released in America.