Trivia: A versatile, commanding, leathery character actor, he learned to raise and ride broncos on his family's ranch during his youth. He attended college for two years, became a seaman, then began his performing career as a radio announcer; he became nationally known as an announcer on the "March of Time" broadcasts. Onscreen from the late '40s, he often portrayed law officers; he was also convincing as a villain. He was well-known for his TV work; he starred in the series Naked City and Wagon Train. He was married to actress Jeanette Nolan, with whom he appeared in Saddle Tramp (1950) and Two Rode Together (1961); they also acted together on radio, and in the late '60s they joined the cast of the TV series The Virginian, portraying a married couple. Their son was actor Tim McIntire.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from 1959.

Trivia: After distinguishing himself in athletics at Rockhurst college, Jim Bannon launched his film career as a stunt man and double. Under contract to Columbia in the mid-1940s, Bannon starred in a brace of films based on the radio series I Love a Mystery. Bannon was also one of four actors to essay the role of B-western hero Red Ryder, and was a regular on such radio series as The Great Gildersleeve and Stars over Hollywood. In 1955, Bannon starred on the Gene Autry-produced TV series The Adventures of Champion. At one time married to actress Bea Benaderet, Jim Bannon was the father of TV actor Jack Bannon.

Trivia: After majoring in drama and music at Northwestern University, Jean Hagen went to New York, where she worked as an usherette by day and a radio actress by night. In 1949, Hagen was one of several "new face" Broadway performers (including Judy Holliday, Tom Ewell and David Wayne) selected to appear in the supporting cast of the Tracy/Hepburn comedy Adam's Rib; she played the slatternly "other woman" who comes between Judy Holliday and Tom Ewell. This led to a long-term MGM contract and a telling dramatic role as Sterling Hayden's doomed girlfriend in John Huston's Asphalt Jungle (1950). In 1952, Hagen was cast in her best-ever screen role: screechy-voiced silent film star Lina Lamont ("Waddya think I am, dumb or sumpin'?") in the imperishable Singin' in the Rain. From 1953 through 1956, Hagen played Margaret Williams, wife of nightclub entertainer Danny Thomas, in Make Room for Daddy. Her character was summarily "killed off" when she left the series in its third season; according to Thomas, Hagen felt that sitcom work was beneath her. Unfortunately, with such notable exceptions as The Shaggy Dog (1959) and Sunrise at Campobello (1960), Hagen's career went into an eclipse after Make Room for Daddy, and by 1964 she had retired from acting. As historian Bill Warren observed, Hagen "was so versatile that, paradoxically, she became hard to cast." In the mid-1970s, after undergoing radical surgery and cobalt treatment for throat cancer, Hagen valiantly attempted a comeback in character roles. Jean Hagen died at the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital at the age of 54.

Trivia: Redheaded leading man Robert Horton attended UCLA, served in the Coast Guard during World War II, and acted in California-based stage productions before making his entree into films in 1951. Horton's television career started off on a high note in 1955, when he was cast in the weekly-TV version of King's Row as Drake McHugh (the role essayed by Ronald Reagan in the 1942 film version). The series barely lasted three months, but better things were on the horizon: in 1957, Horton was hired to play frontier scout Flint McCullough in Wagon Train, which became the highest-rated western on TV. Horton remained with Wagon Train until 1962. He then did some more stage work before embarking on his third series, 1965's The Man Called Shenandoah. When this one-season wonder ran its course, Horton toured the dinner-theatre circuit, then in 1982 accepted a major role on the popular daytime soap opera As the World Turns. Horton continued acting until the late 1980s. He died in 2016, at age 91.