Trivia: Born in Brooklyn, Jeff Chandler attended that borough's Erasmus High School, the spawning ground of many top stage and film personalities. He spent two years in summer stock before serving in World War II. After the war, he became a busy radio actor, co-starring as the clueless Professor Boynton on the popular Eve Arden sitcom Our Miss Brooks. His first film appearance was a one-line bit in Columbia's Johnny O'Clock (1947). He made a better impression as an Israeli freedom fighter in Universal's Sword in the Desert (1948)--so much so that the studio's executives ordered that Chandler's role be expanded during filming. In 1950, Chandler made the first of three screen appearances as sagacious Apache chief Cochise in Broken Arrow. Though he worried that he'd be typecast in Native American parts, Chandler became a top leading man of the 1950s, his sex appeal curiously heightened by his prematurely gray hair. Shortly after completing his role in Merrill's Marauders (1962), Jeff Chandler died at age 42, the victim of blood poisoning following spinal surgery.

Trivia: John Saxon never intentionally set out to be a Brando clone, but his resemblance to Marlon Brando was something he was born with, so what was there to do? A student of Stella Adler at the Actor's Studio, Saxon's first film was Running Wild (1955). Thanks to "hunk" assignments in films like The Restless Years (1957), The Reluctant Debutante (1958), and Summer Youth (1958), Saxon was briefly the object of many a teenage crush. He shed himself of his heartthrob image in the early '60s with a string of unsympathetic roles, making a leading man comeback of sorts as Bruce Lee's co-star in the immensely popular Enter the Dragon (1973). Fans could watch Saxon's expertise as an actor increase (and his hairline recede) during his three-year (1969-1972) stint as Dr. Ted Stuart on the NBC television series The Bold Ones. He later appeared as a semiregular on the prime-time TV soaper Dallas. In 1988, John Saxon made his directorial debut with the low-budget feature Death House.

Trivia: Dolores Hart was raised by her grandparents in Chicago. Not yet out of her teens, Hart was discovered by producer Hal Wallis, who cast her as Elvis' new leading lady in both Loving You (1957) and King Creole (1959). She appeared on Broadway in 1959's The Pleasure of His Company, then returned to Hollywood for her best remembered film, Where the Boys Are (1960). Her pious, reverent comments to interviewers while filming 1961's Francis of Assisi may have seemed like so much hype to Tinseltown cynics; but as it turned out, Hart's religiosity was very real. In 1963, Dolores Hart gave up her $50,000-per-picture career to enter a Benedictine order of nuns in Connecticut; after several years' probation as sister Judith, she matriculated to "Mother Dolores," which she remains to this day.

Trivia: American actress Marsha Hunt, born Marcia Hunt, attended the Theodore Irving School of Dramatics while still a teenager. Simultaneously, she worked as a Powers model until she debuted onscreen in The Virginia Judge (1935) at age 18. Hunt went on to become a very busy screen actress through the early '50s. In the '30s she appeared in supporting roles such as bridesmaids and coeds, while in the '40s she played leads in second features and second leads and supporting roles in major productions. In the early '50s, during the heyday of the McCarthy Era "witch hunts," she was blacklisted by the studios for her liberal political beliefs, and after 1952 she appeared in only a handful of films, as well as the TV series Peck's Bad Girl. Through the '80s, however, she still turned up occasionally in character roles on TV. From 1938-43 she was married to editor (now director) Jerry Hopper. After 1946 she was married to movie/TV scriptwriter Robert Presnell Jr., who died in 1986. She remains active in social issues, lending her help to organizations involved with such issues as peace, poverty, population, and pollution; she is a frequent speaker on the issues that concern her, and she serves on nearly a dozen Boards of Directors. She was last onscreen in Johnny Got His Gun (1971).

Trivia: Discovered by famed African-American comedian Bert Williams, actor Jay C. Flippen attained his first Broadway stage role in 1920's Broadway Brevities. Entertainers of the period were expected to sing, dance, act and clown with equal expertise, and the young Flippen was no slouch in any of these categories. He not only shared billing with such stage luminaries as Jack Benny and Texas Guinan, but he boned up on his ad-lib skills as a radio announcer for the New York Yankees games. At one time president of the American Guild of Variety Artists, Flippen did as many benefits for worthy causes as he did paid performances and worked tirelessly in all showbiz branches: movies, stage (including the touring version of Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin), radio (he was one of the first game show emcees) and even early experimental television broadcasts. After several years of alternating between raspy-voiced villains and lovable "Pop"- type characters in films, Flippen increased his fan following with a supporting role as C.P.O. Nelson on the 1962 sitcom Ensign O'Toole, which, though it lasted only one network season, was a particular favorite in syndicated reruns. In 1964, Flippen suffered a setback when a gangrenous leg had to be amputated. Choosing not to be what he described as "a turnip," Jay C. Flippen continued his acting career from a wheelchair, performing with vim and vinegar in films and on television until his death.

Trivia: One of many handsome studio contractees of the '50s, American actor Ray Stricklyn seldom rose any farther than "second lead" status. After a few years' stage work and his film debut in Paramount's Proud and the Profane (1956), Stricklyn signed with 20th Century-Fox, where he offered steadfast support to such larger luminaries as Richard Widmark (The Last Wagon [1956]), Gary Cooper (Ten North Frederick [1957]) and Claude Rains (The Lost World [1960]). Good-looking in an assembly line way, Stricklyn was a stalwart of second-feature westerns in the '60s like Young Jesse James (1960) and Arizona Raiders (1965). Ray Stricklyn never quite achieved full stardom, but it certainly wasn't from lack of exposure.

Trivia: Character actor James Westerfield made comparatively few films, as his first love was the stage; he produced, directed and acted in a number of Broadway productions, and was the recipient of two New York Drama Critics awards. In films from 1941 (he's easily recognizable as a traffic cop in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons), he was generally cast as villains, notably as a recurring rapscallion on the 1963 TV series The Travels of Jamie McPheeters. Disney fans will remember Westerfield as the flustered small-town police officer (variously named Hanson and Morrison) in such fanciful farces as The Shaggy Dog (1959), The Absent Minded Professor (1960) and Son of Flubber (1963). James Westerfield was married to actress Fay Tracy.

Trivia: American actor Vaughn Taylor was trained as a certified public accountant at Northeastern University. While performing in college theatricals, Taylor entertained notions of a stage career; he won a scholarship at the Leland Powers School of Theatre, but his resources were so low that he had to sell his blood to blood banks to pay his expenses. Steady stock, tent-show, and radio work convinced Taylor that he'd made the right career move, and upon completing his Army duties in 1945, the actor took on the new challenge of live television. Taylor played so many TV roles that it is fruitless to try to list them, though the first "couch potato generation" might have affectionate memories of the actor as sharp-witted janitor Ernest P. Duckweather on the 1953 satirical puppet show Johnny Jupiter. (Taylor was replaced by Wright King when the series went from live to film). Taylor was also a prominent "summer repertory" actor on the prestigious anthology Robert Montgomery Presents from 1952 through 1954. The movies utilized Taylor's talents, often in roles as duplicitous executives or crooked business partners: he was the two-timing showman beheaded by magician Vincent Price in The Mad Magician (1954). Anyone who follows the reruns of The Twilight Zone will be more than familiar with the skill and range of Vaughn Taylor: he played bookworm Burgess Meredith's hardhearted boss in "Time Enough at Last," a crazed old conjurer in "Still Valley," an unctuous robot salesman in "I Sing the Body Electric" and a kindly wheelchair-bound gent who sells his kindness and becomes a killer in "The Self-Improvement of Salvatore Ross."

Trivia: Actor Joe Hamilton staffed a few films of the '50s and '60s.

Trivia: Originally intending to become a journalist, William Challee abandoned this dream when he began appearing in Chicago-based theatrical productions. Challee's Broadway career reached its peak in the late '30s with Wonder Boy. In films from 1943, he was usually seen as well-dressed gangsters, pushy reporters, and grim military officers. William Challee's later credits included such roles as Nicholas Duprea in the Jack Nicholson starrer Five Easy Pieces.