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 Wayne took it upon himself to line up work for Arness, becoming one of the withdrawn young actor's few friends.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: Educated in Switzerland and England, Irish actress Fionnula Flanagan studied for her trade at Dublin's Abbey Theatre. With her portrayal of Gerty McDowell in the 1967 film version of Ulysses, Flanagan established herself as one of the foremost interpreters of James Joyce. She made her 1968 Broadway bow in Brian Friel's Lovers then appeared in such Joycean theatrical projects as Ulysses in Nighttown and James Joyce's Women (1977). The last-named project earned her "Critic's Circle" awards in Los Angeles and San Francisco; it was subsequently committed to film in 1988, with Flanagan repeating her portrayal of Harriet Shaw Weaver. A familiar presence in American television, Flanagan has appeared in several made-for-TV movies, among them The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975), Mary White (1977), The Ewok Adventure (1984) and A Winner Never Quits (1986). She won an Emmy for her work as Clothilde in the 1976 network miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man. Fionnula Flanagan's weekly-series stints have included Aunt Molly Culhane in How the West Was Won (1977), which earned her a second Emmy nomination; Lt. Guyla Cook in Hard Copy (1987) and Kathleen Meacham, wife of police chief John Mahoney (another transplant from the British Isles) in Help (1990).

Trivia: The first time that American actor Bruce Boxleitner set foot on stage, it was with a total of four hours' preparation. While in high school, Boxleitner was forced to jump into the role of My Fair Lady's Henry Higgins when the young man originally cast in the part came down with mononucleosis the day before the show. The applause that greeted Boxleitner's debut was enough to inspire him to continue studying drama at the Goodman Theatre. His first Broadway play flopped, but he managed to secure steady work in a series of villainous supporting roles in Hollywood. With the help of fabled super-agent Jay Bernstein, Boxleitner climbed to stardom, reaching a particularly lofty rung with his four season-stint (from 1983 to 1987) as government agent Lee Stetson on the TV series Scarecrow and Mrs. King. More recently, Bruce Boxleitner was seen as fictional ballplayer "Jumpin' Joe Dugan" in the 1992 Babe Ruth biopic The Babe.

Trivia: Working from the ground up in stock companies, Lloyd Bridges was a member of the progressive Actors Lab company in the mid 1930s. He made his Broadway debut toward the end of that decade in a production of Othello. Signed by Columbia in 1941, Bridges appeared in everything the studio assigned him, from Three Stooges 2-reel comedies to such "A" pictures as Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Talk of the Town (1942), and Sahara (1943). He began freelancing in 1945, accepting the prescient role of a deep-sea diver in 1948's 16 Fathoms Deep, among other films. The most memorable of his '50s assignments was the leading role in the cult science-fiction programmer Rocketship X-M (1950) and the part of the look-out-for-number-one deputy in High Noon (1952).Thanks to his earlier involvement in the Actors Lab and his admission at the HUAC hearings that he'd once flirted with communism, Bridges was "graylisted" during the mid-'50s, able to find work only in lesser pictures and TV shows. He was rescued by producer Ivan Tors, who cast Bridges as diver-for-hire Mike Nelson in the TV series Sea Hunt. Filmed between 1957 and 1961, Sea Hunt was the most popular syndicated program of the era, turning Bridges into a millionaire. Alas, neither of his subsequent series of the '60s, The Lloyd Bridges Show (1962) and The Loner (1965), survived their first seasons. Undaunted, Bridges continued working into the '90s, displaying a hitherto untapped flair for zany comedy in such films as Airplane! (1980), Joe vs. the Volcano (1990), and the two Hot Shots films. Bridges was the father of actors Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges. A committed environmentalist, he was involved in several organizations including the American Oceans Campaign and Heal the Bay, a Los Angeles-based group. Bridges died of natural causes on March 10, 1998. Shortly before his passing, he had completed work on two films, Jane Austen's Mafia and Meeting Daddy; in the latter film, Bridges co-starred with his eldest son Beau.

Trivia: As a child actor, Tim Matheson was billed under his fuller family name of Matthieson. His first weekly TV co-starring assignment was opposite Robert Young in the 1961 "dramedy" Window on Main Street. The young actor's voice became familiar to a generation of cartoon fans via his "role" as the title character in Hanna-Barbera's Jonny Quest. The handsome Matheson appeared on-screen during his maturation years on such western series as The Virginian, Bonanza, and The Quest. He remained busy in films during this period, scoring his biggest 1970s success as party animal Otter in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). Matheson also kept his hand in the voiceover business, providing the truculent mutterings of "Blood" the dog in Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog (1975) and recording the narration for the 1985 revival of Disney's Fantasia. His adult TV appearances have included weekly stints on the TV series Tucker's Witch (1982), Just in Time, (1988) and Charlie Hoover (1991). Turning to directing in 1985, Matheson has been active in episodic television, music videos and direct-to-cassette movies. In 1989, he became CEO of the National Lampoon Company, though he still manages to find time for the occasional acting assignment, appearing in everything from the theatrical feature Drop Dead Fred to the live-action prologue for one of the "thrill rides" at Disneyworld.

Trivia: Though perhaps best remembered for playing the suave, mysterious Mr. Roarke on the popular television series Fantasy Island (1978-1984), and for his car commercials in which he seductively exhorted the pleasures of the upholstery ("Rich, Corinthian leather") in his distinctive Spanish accent, Ricardo Montalban once played romantic leads in major features of the '40s and '50s. He also had a successful career on-stage. Born Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalban y Merino in Mexico City, Montalban spent part of his youth in the U.S. The tall, dark, handsome, and curly haired actor first worked as a bit player on Broadway before returning to Mexico in the early '40s and launching a film career there. By 1947, he had returned to the States and signed with MGM. That year, Montalban played his first leading role opposite Cyd Charisse in the romantic musical Fiesta (1947). It would be the first of many roles in which he would play a passionate singing and dancing "Latin Lover." He and Charisse again teamed up as dancers in the Esther Williams musical water extravaganza in On an Island With You (1948). At one point, it was a toss-up between Montalban and fellow MGM "LL" Fernando Lamas as to which was more popular. It would not be until 1949 before Montalban had the opportunity to play a non-romantic role as a border agent who gets revenge upon the killers of his partner in Border Incident. His second serious role in Battleground (1949) ranks among his best performances. By the late '50s, he had become a character actor, often cast in ethnic roles, notably that of a genteel Japanese Kabuki actor in Sayonara (1957). He had occasionally appeared on television since the late '50s, but did not appear regularly until the mid-'70s. In 1976, Montalban earned an Emmy for his portrayal of a Sioux chief in the television miniseries How the West Was Won. In the early '70s he was part of a touring troupe that read dramatic excerpts from Shaw's Don Juan in Hell. In 1982, Montalban reprised a role he had made famous on the original Star Trek TV series as the ruthless Khan to star in the second Star Trek feature, The Wrath of Khan. In the '80s, Montalban only sporadically appeared in feature films. His television career also slowed, though he occasionally appeared on series such as The Colbys (1985-1987) and Heaven Help Us! (1994). Montalban has written an autobiography, Reflections: A Life in Two Worlds (1980). Confined to a wheelchair after a 1993 spinal operation left him paralyzed from the waist down, Montalban remiained in good health despite being in constant pain, and continued to play an active role in promoting Nostros - a non-profit organization founded by Montalban in 1970 and dedicated to improving the image of Latinos within the entertainment industry. In the late 1990s and early 2000s Moltalban's career recieved something of a second wind when he began performing vocal work on such animated television series' as Freakazoid!, Dora the Explorer, and Kim Possible, with a role as the kindly grandfather in Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over even giving the wheelchair-bound actor an opportunity to triumphantly rise once again thanks to the magic of special effects. Additional vocal work in the 2006 animated family adventure The Ant Bully continued to keep Montalban busy despite his physical limitations. His brother, Carlos Montalban, was also an actor.

Trivia: Richard Basehart was too much of an actor (and almost too good an actor) to ever be a movie star -- his range was sufficient to allow him to play murderers, psychopaths, sociopaths, and would-be suicides in 20 years' worth of theatrical films in totally convincing fashion, but also to portray a hero in the longest-running science fiction/adventure series on network television. Without ever achieving stardom, he became one of the most respected performers of his generation in theater, film, and television. Born John Richard Basehart in Zanesville, OH, in 1914, he spent a part of his childhood in an orphanage after the death of his mother, when his father, Harry Basehart, found himself unable to look after the four children left in his care. The younger Basehart considered a career in journalism like his father, but when he was 13, he began acting in small roles in a local theater company and came to enjoy performing. In the mid-'30s, he joined Jasper Deeter's famed Hedgerow Theater company in Rose Valley, PA. By the end of the 1930s, he'd set his sights on a Broadway career and moved to New York. During the 1939 season, while working in stock, Basehart met an actress named Stephanie Klein, and the two were married in early 1940. He continued trying to establish a foothold in New York and in 1942, joined Margaret Webster's theater company. Basehart's breakthrough role came during 1945 in the play The Hasty Heart, in which director Bretaigne Windust cast him in the central role of the proud, dying young Scottish soldier. Basehart won the 1945 New York Drama Critics Award for his performance and was named the most promising newcomer of the season. Not only did Broadway producers take notice of Basehart but so did Hollywood, and he was soon signed to a movie contract. Thus began a screen career that lasted nearly 40 years, starting with Repeat Performance (1947), a thriller starring Joan Leslie. He followed this with Cry Wolf (1947), an adventure yarn also starring Barbara Stanwyck, Errol Flynn, and Geraldine Brooks. Basehart was unusually careful as a new Hollywood performer to vary his roles and avoid getting typecast. His first of what proved a string of memorable portrayals was in He Walked By Night (1948), a fact-based thriller in which the actor played a brilliant but sociopathic electronics expert, responsible for a string of burglaries and for killing a police officer. Viewers who grew up knowing Basehart as the heroic figure on the series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in the 1960s are often startled to see him 20 years earlier in He Walked By Night as an almost feral presence, quietly fierce, threatening and stealthy in his efforts to escape detection and capture. Over the next two years, Basehart essayed a multitude of roles, in contemporary dramatic subjects and period dramas, the most interesting of which was Anthony Mann's Reign of Terror (1949), in which he portrayed Maximilien Robespierre, one of the chief architects of the bloodbath that followed in the wake of the French Revolution. In 1950, Basehart played one of the most difficult film roles of his career when he was cast in the fact-based movie Fourteen Hours, playing a young man who spends 14 hours on the ledge of an office building, threatening to jump. It was during the shooting of this movie that Basehart's wife, Stephanie, was taken ill with what proved to be a brain tumor, and died very suddenly. He finished work on the film and then left the United States, going to Italy where he began putting his life back together. This began when he met the actress Valentina Cortese, whom he married in 1951. The two worked together in one movie, The House on Telegraph Hill, directed by Robert Wise at 20th Century Fox, in which Basehart played the villain trying to murder Cortese for her estate. Basehart returned to Hollywood only intermittently for the next nine years, and his next appearance in an American movie wasn't until 1953, when he worked in Titanic, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb. It was during the decade that Basehart made his home in Europe that the actor became multilingual, and developed a serious following over there as a leading man; while other, older American performers were entering the final legs of their careers making pictures in France, Italy, or England, he was making important pictures and playing great roles, as the doomed, gentle clown in Federico Fellini's La Strada; a basically honest man driven into crime in The Good Die Young; the movie director threatened by a blackmailer in Joseph Losey's Finger of Guilt, and even an action-adventure hero in an Italian-made version of Cartouche (1957). John Huston specifically chose Basehart for the central role of Ishmael in his superb 1956 film version of Moby Dick. In 1957, Basehart tried reestablishing his Hollywood acting credentials with his portrayal of a conscience-stricken American officer in the movie Time Limit, which got good notices but proved to be a one-off American screen credit. In 1960, the actor divorced his second wife and left Italy behind. He returned to live permanently in America and restart his career, and began a new life, marrying again in 1962. He found that film roles weren't easily forthcoming, however -- the only part that came his way was the title role in Stuart Heisler's 1962 drama Hitler, in which Basehart gave an unusually complex, cerebral portrayal of the Nazi leader. He made numerous appearances in dramatic series such as Combat and Naked City, and television anthology shows including Playhouse 90 and Hallmark Hall of Fame. In 1964, Basehart accepted the offer of a starring role on a television series, beginning a four-year run on the Irwin Allen-produced Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, portraying Admiral Harriman Nelson. Thus began the steadiest work of his career, more than 100 episodes made Basehart a television star. He appeared in one movie during this period, John Sturges' thriller The Satan Bug (1965), in which he played the villain. Following the cancellation of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Basehart returned to acting on-stage, interspersed with work in made-for-television movies and occasional feature films, such as Rage (1972), directed by George C. Scott. He won critical acclaim for his work in the drama The Andersonville Trial, directed by George C. Scott, portraying Lt. Col. Henry Wirz, the commandant of the notorious Confederate prisoner of war camp, and made the rounds of guest star roles in television shows, perhaps most memorably the "Dagger of the Mind" episode of Columbo. Basehart and his third wife, Diana, also became known for their dedication to the cause of animal rights, founding the organization Actors and Others for Animals. During the final years of his life, he did some acting on television series such as Knight Rider and appeared in movies such as the hit Being There, but he was also very much in demand as a narrator, working on Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War (1980), among other projects. It was as a narrator that he made his final public appearance, at the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics. Basehart suffered a series of strokes, and passed away soon after.

Trivia: Burly character actor Ramon Bieri made his first professional stage appearance in 1954. A film performer from 1970, Bieri has often shown up as rednecks and rabblerousers. One of his best-remembered screen assignments was also one of his smallest: as the strong-arm police captain in Warren Beatty's Reds, Bieri responded to Beatty's explanatory "I write" by growling "No...you wrong!" A more affable Bieri was seen as Babe Ruth in the 1977 TV movie A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story. Ramon Bieri's many TV-series credits include the starring role of Detroit blue-collar worker Joe Wabash in Joe's World (1979-1980).