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 Wayne took it upon himself to line up work for Arness, becoming one of the withdrawn young actor's few friends.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: Joseph Pevney may not be the first name that one thinks of in terms of record-breaking movies, but the actor-turned-director -- who had a pretty considerable stage career before turning exclusively to the movies in the second half of the 1940s -- was responsible for some of the highest-grossing movies in the first four decades of Universal Pictures; and between and around them, he was one of the most reliable filmmakers in Hollywood, a touch he didn't lose when he jumped to television in the second half of the 1960s. He was a director with a widely recognized knack for making something substantial out of very little script, which proved a priceless gift on both the large and small screens. Joseph Pevney was born in Manhattan in 1911, the son of a watchmaker and amateur songwriter. He was a natural performer and made his debut at age 12, in 1924, as a boy soprano, in vaudeville. In those days, kid acts had a novelty value, but among the practitioners were a few genuine prodigies who had what it took to extend their career into adulthood -- Alfred Newman was one on the piano, and Joe Pevney was one as an actor. He hated vaudeville and intended to become a doctor, even becoming a pre-med student at New York University, but by then he couldn't escape the lure of the theater. He was soon devoting his energy to directing varsity dramatics and before graduation ever became an issue, he was an assistant stage manager and bit player on Broadway. His first professional appearance on stage as a serious actor was in Johnny Johnson, and he subsequently appeared in such major plays as The World We Make, Key Largo, Golden Boy, and Native Son. Pevney juggled his acting and directing work throughout the 1930s, and it was while directing in a summer theater in Iveryton, CT, in 1939 that he first met Mitzi Green, an actress who'd been working from an even earlier age and had lately made her Broadway debut. They were married in 1942 and had two children who they raised in a successful bi-coastal life, keeping a home in the San Fernando Valley and one in Flushing, Queens. Pevney's career was interrupted by World War II, which took him to Europe as a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He was also in the 1944 revival of Counselor at Law on Broadway starring Paul Muni, playing Harry Becker, the injured, wild-eyed communist agitator (played by Vincent Sherman in the movie). His last major stage appearance was in Home of the Brave, in which he played Coney. Pevney made his big-screen debut in 1946, in Edwin L. Marin's crime thriller Nocturne starring George Raft and Lynn Bari, and the following year played a major co-starring role with John Garfield and Lilli Palmer in Robert Rossen's Body and Soul (1947). He was in a couple of more very good movies, including Jules Dassin's Thieves' Highway (1949) and his own Outside the Wall (1950), before he gave up acting permanently in favor of directing. He was signed up at Universal and proved to be a dual-threat director, very good with actors -- obviously as a result of his years of experience on stage -- and yet was also well able to set up and bring off an action scene on budget and excitingly. Pevney worked with such future stars as Rock Hudson (whom he initially did not want) in the movie The Iron Man, Mamie van Doren, and Frank Sinatra when he was still trying to prove that he could be a serious actor, and did well with and by all of them. He was equally good at drama, comedy, thrillers, and costume epics, but he seemed to have special success -- in terms of the acting that resulted -- working with Tony Curtis (in Six Bridges to Cross) and Jeff Chandler. He and Chandler, with George Nader and Richard Boone in supporting roles, proved an unbeatable combination in Away All Boats, which became the highest grossing movie in the history of the studio up to that time. He followed that grim, intense war drama up barely a year later with a gentle, lyrical, romantic, and seductive Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), which was not only a huge hit but also yielded a string of sequels (none directed by Pevney). He was not a great stylist, but for reasons that even they themselves don't understand, the French film critics liked his movies anyway, and if American critics were less accommodating, the American public expressed their approval of his work by turning it into a string of hits. He moved into television during the 1960s and directed dozens of episodes of Bonanza and some of the most popular episodes from the first and second seasons of Star Trek, including "Arena," "Amok Time," "The Trouble With Tribbles," and "The Immunity Syndrome," before turning to directing made-for-television features. Pevney retired in the 1980s, but his best movies and television episodes have continued to find new life on cable television and DVD releases well into the 21st century. He died in 2008 at age 96.