Trivia: The younger brother of Gunsmoke star James Arness, American actor Peter Graves worked as a musician and radio actor before entering films with 1950's Rogue River. At first, it appeared that Graves would be the star of the family, since he was cast in leads while brother Jim languished in secondary roles. Then came Stalag 17 (1953), in which Graves was first-rate as a supposedly all-American POW who turned out to be a vicious Nazi spy. Trouble was, Graves played the part too well, and couldn't shake the Nazi stereotype in the eyes of most Hollywood producers. Suddenly the actor found himself in such secondary roles as Shelley Winters' doomed husband in Night of the Hunter (1955) (he was in and out of the picture after the first ten minutes), while sibling James Arness was riding high with Gunsmoke. Dissatisfied with his film career, Graves signed on in 1955 for a network kid's series about "a horse and the boy who loved him." Fury wasn't exactly Citizen Kane, but it ran five years and made Graves a wealthy man through rerun residuals--so much so that he claimed to be making more money from Fury than his brother did from Gunsmoke. In 1966, Peter Graves replaced Steven Hill as head honcho of the force on the weekly TV adventure series Mission: Impossible, a stint that lasted until 1973. Though a better than average actor, Graves gained something of a camp reputation for his stiff, straight-arrow film characters and was often cast in films that parodied his TV image. One of the best of these lampoonish appearances was in the Zucker-Abrahams comedy Airplane (1980), as a nutty airline pilot who asks outrageous questions to a young boy on the plane (a part the actor very nearly turned down, until he discovered that Leslie Nielsen was co-starring in the film). Peter Graves effortlessly maintained his reliable, authoritative movie persona into the '90s and 2000s, and hosted the Biography series on A&E, for which he won an Emmy; he also guest-starred on programs including Cold Case, House and American Dad. Graves died of natural causes in March 2010, at age 83.

Trivia: Italian lead actor Nino Castelnuovo began appearing in films in 1960.

Trivia: Japanese character lead, onscreen from the '60s.

Trivia: Claudio Gora was a highly regarded, versatile Italian theatrical and film actor who also occasionally directed features. As a thespian, Gora reached the pinnacle of his popularity during Italy's so-called "Golden Age" of cinema during the '50s and '60s. Gora (born Emilio Giordana in Genoa) made his film debut with Trappola d'amore (1939), two years after he first appeared on stage. Quite handsome in youth, Gora spent the WWII years playing romantic leads in such dramas as Luigi Zamkpa's Signoirinette and often worked opposite some of his country's most alluring actresses. In 1950, Gora made his directorial debut with a neorealist drama, The Sky is Red. He subsequently helmed nine more films in a variety of genres ranging from comedies to violent westerns. His most famous film was Febbre di Vivere (1953) starring Marcello Mastroianni. During the '60s, Gora revitalized his acting career after he perfected his "middle-class Italian cynic" character. He played versions of the unscrupulous fellow in such films as Pietro Germi's The Facts of Murder (1960) and Il Medico della Mutua (1968). As an actor, Gora appeared in 130 films. He played his last role in Vacanze di Natali '91/Christmas Vacation '91 (1991). In addition to his eventful film career, Gora also had a busy career on stage and television.

Trivia: After attending City College of New York, Marc Lawrence studied acting with Eva Le Gallienne. Among the many stage productions in which Lawrence appeared were Sour Mountain and Waiting for Lefty. First signed for films by Columbia in 1932, Lawrence's scarred face and growly voice made him indispensable for gangster parts, though he generally displayed an intelligence far higher than the average goon or gunman. Though usually limited to villainy, Lawrence was not always confined to urban roles, as witness his successful portrayals of a mountaineer in Shepherd of the Hills (1942) and a western saddle tramp in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). The actor's own favorite role was Corio in 1947's Captain from Castille. During the House UnAmerican Activities Committee investigations of the 1950s, Lawrence reluctantly offered testimony implicating several of his coworkers as alleged communist sympathizers; the experience virtually destroyed his American career and left him embittered and defensive (he would always refuse to be interviewed by historians of the "Blacklist" era, referring to them as "ghouls"). Lawrence was forced to seek out work in Europe, where he'd emerge in the early 1960s as a director of crime films and spaghetti westerns. Back in the U.S. in the 1980s, Lawrence made several TV appearances and showed up in such films as The Big Easy (1987) and Newsies (1992), typecast once more as gangsters. In 1993, Lawrence privately published his memoirs, in which for the first time in print he addressed his dark days as an HUAC "friendly witness."