Trivia: Born Randolph Crane, this virile, weathered, prototypical cowboy star with a gallant manner and slight Southern accent enlisted for service in the U.S. Army during World War I at age 19. After returning home he got a degree in engineering, then joined the Pasadena Community Playhouse. While golfing, Scott met millionaire filmmaker Howard Hughes, who helped him enter films as a bit player. In the mid '30s he began landing better roles, both as a romantic lead and as a costar. Later he became a Western star, and from the late '40s to the '50s he starred exclusively in big-budget color Westerns (39 altogether). From 1950-53 he was one of the top ten box-office attractions. Later in the '50s he played the aging cowboy hero in a series of B-Westerns directed by Budd Boetticher for Ranown, an independent production company. He retired from the screen in the early '60s. Having invested in oil wells, real estate, and securities, he was worth between $50-$100 million.

Trivia: A Rice Institute graduate, James Craig took his first acting lessons from prominent character player Cyril Delevanti. After taking a few extra jobs, Craig was given a speaking role in 1937's Sophie Lang Goes West. He appeared in the serials Fighting G-Men (1938) and Winners of the West (1940), and showed up in such two-reelers as the Three Stooges'Oil's Well that Ends Well (1939), before landing his first important "A" picture role opposite Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1940). Craig was then showered with critical praise for his portrayal of Jabez Stone, the New Hampshire farmer who sells his soul to the Devil in 1941's All That Money Can Buy (aka The Devil and Daniel Webster). During the war, Craig became an MGM leading man, chiefly by virtue of his resemblance to Clark Gable; his best films during this period include Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945) and a few interesting program westerns. His films declined in importance throughout the 1950s. By the mid-1960s, Craig was of one of several old-timers appearing in the inexpensive Technicolor westerns being produced by A.C. Lyles and Alex Gordon. After retiring from films, James Craig became a successful real estate agent.

Trivia: Born in Kulm, North Dakota and educated at Glendale College and Immaculate Heart College, Angeline Brown acquired her professional name Angie Dickinson when she married college football star Gene Dickinson. A beauty contest winner, Dickinson entered films with an unbilled bit in the 1954 Warner Bros. musical Lucky Me. Her earliest films consisted mostly of "B" Westerns (at one point, she dubbed in actress Sarita Montiel's voice in 1957's Run of the Arrow) and television (Dickinson was rather nastily murdered in very first episode of Mike Hammer). She moved to the A-list when selected by Howard Hawks to play the female lead in Rio Bravo (1958). The film gave Dickinson ample opportunity to display her celebrated legs, which, for publicity purposes, were reportedly insured by Lloyd's of London. She went on to star in films both famous and forgettable: one of the roles for which she is best remembered is as the mistress of gangster Ronald Reagan (!) in The Killers (1964). In 1974, Dickinson jump-started her flagging career as the star of the TV cop drama Police Woman, which lasted four seasons and represented a tremendous step up in popularity for Dickinson. On that program, the actress played Suzanne "Pepper" Anderson, an undercover agent with the LAPD's criminal conspiracy division, whose assignments nearly always included donning a crafty and sexy guise in order to nab an underworld criminal.At about the same time, Dickinson also moved into motion pictures and (after years of consciously avoiding nude scenes), went au naturel for exploitation king Roger Corman in that producer's depression-era romp Big Bad Mama, which unsurprisingly became a cult favorite. (Years later, in 1987, she teamed up with Z-grade shlockmeister Jim Wynorski for New World's Big Bad Mama II). Brian DePalma's Psycho-influenced thriller Dressed to Kill (1980) brought the actress greater visibility, and like the Corman assignments, required Angie to do erotic nudity (though in this case, the below-the-waist shower shots were reportedly performed by a body double).In later years, Dickinson leaned more heavily on starring and supporting turns in made-for-television productions, including a telemovie follow-up to Police Woman, Police Woman: The Freeway Killings (1987); the Oliver Stone miniseries Wild Palms (1993); the direct-to-video thriller The Maddening (1995) (opposite longtime friend and colleague Burt Reynolds); and the prime-time soaper Danielle Steele's Rememberance (1996). The next decade found the septuagenarian actress unexpectedly returning to A-list Hollywood features, albeit in small supporting roles; these included Duets (2000), Pay it Forward (2000) and Ocean's Eleven (2001) (in a cameo as herself, nodding to her involvement in the original).Angie Dickinson was married to composer Burt Bacharach from 1965 to 1980.

Trivia: The son of an Oklahoma carpet layer, James Garner did stints in the Army and merchant marines before working as a model. His professional acting career began with a non-speaking part in the Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (1954), in which he was also assigned to run lines with stars Lloyd Nolan, Henry Fonda, and John Hodiak. Given that talent roster, and the fact that the director was Charles Laughton, Garner managed to earn his salary and receive a crash course in acting at the same time. After a few television commercials, he was signed as a contract player by Warner Bros. in 1956. He barely had a part in his first film, The Girl He Left Behind (1956), though he was given special attention by director David Butler, who felt Garner had far more potential than the film's nominal star, Tab Hunter. Due in part to Butler's enthusiasm, Garner was cast in the Warner Bros. TV Western Maverick. The scriptwriters latched on to his gift for understated humor, and, before long, the show had as many laughs as shoot-outs. Garner was promoted to starring film roles during his Maverick run, but, by the third season, he chafed at his low salary and insisted on better treatment. The studio refused, so he walked out. Lawsuits and recriminations were exchanged, but the end result was that Garner was a free agent as of 1960. He did quite well as a freelance actor for several years, turning in commendable work in such films as Boys' Night Out (1962) and The Great Escape (1963), but was soon perceived by filmmakers as something of a less-expensive Rock Hudson, never more so than when he played Hudson-type parts opposite Doris Day in Move Over, Darling and The Thrill of It All! (both 1963).Garner fared rather better in variations of his Maverick persona in such Westerns as Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) and The Skin Game (1971), but he eventually tired of eating warmed-over stew; besides, being a cowboy star had made him a walking mass of injuries and broken bones. He tried to play a more peaceable Westerner in the TV series Nichols (1971), but when audiences failed to respond, his character was killed off and replaced by his more athletic twin brother (also Garner). The actor finally shed the Maverick cloak with his long-running TV series The Rockford Files (1974-1978), in which he played a John MacDonald-esque private eye who never seemed to meet anyone capable of telling the truth. Rockford resulted in even more injuries for the increasingly battered actor, and soon he was showing up on TV talk shows telling the world about the many physical activities which he could no longer perform. Rockford ended in a spirit of recrimination, when Garner, expecting a percentage of the profits, learned that "creative bookkeeping" had resulted in the series posting none. To the public, Garner was the rough-hewn but basically affable fellow they'd seen in his fictional roles and as Mariette Hartley's partner (not husband) in a series of Polaroid commercials. However, his later film and TV-movie roles had a dark edge to them, notably his likable but mercurial pharmacist in Murphy's Romance (1985), for which he received an Oscar nomination, and his multifaceted co-starring stints with James Woods in the TV movies Promise (1986) and My Name Is Bill W. (1989). In 1994, Garner came full circle in the profitable feature film Maverick (1994), in which the title role was played by Mel Gibson. With the exception of such lower-key efforts as the noir-ish Twilight (1998) and the made-for-TV thriller Dead Silence (1997), Garner's career in the '90s found the veteran actor once again tapping into his latent ability to provoke laughs in such efforts as Space Cowboys (2000) while maintaining a successful small-screen career by returning to the role of Jim Rockford in several made-for-TV movies. He provided a voice for the popular animatedfeature Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and appeared in the comedy-drama The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002). Garner enjoyed a career resurgance in 2003, when he joined the cast of TV's 8 Simple Rules, acting as a sort of replacement for John Ritter, who had passed away at the beginning of the show's second season. He next appeared in The Notebook (2004), which earned Garner a Screen Actors Guild nomination and also poised him to win the Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award. His last on-screen role was a small supporting role in The Ultimate Gift (2007). In 2008, Garner suffered a stroke and retired acting. He died in 2014, at age 86.

Trivia: Tall, muscular Gordon Jones played heroes, villains, comic-relief second bananas, and just about everything in between, in a screen career lasting almost 30 years -- not bad for a fellow who, eight years into that career, admitted to a reporter that he was still learning about acting. Born in 1911, Jones came to movies in his early twenties, not out of any aspirations as an actor but on the basis of his good looks and athletic build. The brawny Iowa-born Jones was well known as a top student athlete and star football guard ("Bull" Jones) at U.C.L.A., and had also played a few seasons of professional football. Jones started doing movie work for the easy money, and got serious about acting when he found that he liked it; he soon began downplaying his football background so that casting agents would take him more seriously. Jones started out playing small roles in Wesley Ruggles' and Ernest B. Schoedsack's The Monkey's Paw and Sidney Lanfield's Red Salute, and by 1937, he had moved on to a contract at RKO. His biggest screen role in terms of billing came in 1940, in the Universal serial The Green Hornet, where he portrayed publisher Britt Reid, the alter ego of the masked hero of the title; Jones also played the Hornet, but when he was in that guise, he was redubbed with the voice of the era's more familiar radio Green Hornet, Al Hodge. Jones had gained some stage experience, particularly in comedy, during the late '30s, and this stood him in good stead when he auditioned for a role in Max Gordon's Broadway adaptation My Sister Eileen while on a visit to New York; the "rambling wreck from Georgia Tech" (billed as the Wreck in the original program) was the role of a lifetime, giving Jones the chance to play exactly what he was, a lovable big lug. He was good enough in the part to repeat it in Alexander Hall's 1942 movie version, produced by Columbia Pictures. Jones wasn't able to follow up on his success in the film, however, due to the outbreak of the Second World War. The actor held a reserve commission in the army and he was called into the service very soon after finishing work on the movie. In contrast to some actors, however (such as Ronald Reagan, who felt war service had damaged his career and resented it deeply), Jones never complained and, indeed, was very active for the next 20 years of his life in encouraging college students to consider the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). One of his other key roles during 1942 was as Alabama Smith, John Carroll's slightly dim-witted but good-natured sidekick, in Flying Tigers (1943), a John Wayne-starring vehicle that was one of the most popular action films of the war. This picture began Jones' 20-year onscreen association with Wayne, who was also (perhaps not coincidentally) a former football player from U.C.L.A. After resuming his acting career in the late '40s, Jones appeared in prominent roles in the John Wayne features Big Jim McLain and Island in the Sky. By the end of the 1940s, Jones had aged into a somewhat beefier screen presence and into very physical character roles. He would no longer have been considered a leading man, even in serials, but he had developed a very good, slightly over-the-top comic villain persona, strongly reminiscent of Nat Pendleton, Joseph Sawyer, or William Bendix. All of these attributes meshed well with the work of the comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello; Jones' association with the duo began in The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap (1947) with the role of the film's heavy, Jake Frame. During the early '50s, when they began their television series The Abbott & Costello Show, Jones was cast as Mike the cop, the hulking, loud-voiced antagonist to the roly-poly Costello (and, thus, succeeded Pendleton, Sawyer, and Bendix, who had played tough, burly foils to the duo in the movies Buck Privates, Buck Privates Come Home, The Naughty Nineties, and Who Done It). The program was only in production for two seasons, but was rerun regularly into the 1980s and became available on DVD in the 21st century, and, thus, has ensured Jones a permanent place in American popular culture. He remained busy in films and on television throughout the 1950s, in pictures as different as the sci-fi chiller The Monster That Challenged the World and the Tony Curtis/Janet Leigh sex comedy The Perfect Furlough, and on series ranging from The Real McCoys to The Rifleman. Jones also appeared in two very successful Disney movies during the early '60s, The Absent-Minded Professor and Son of Flubber, portraying harried school coaches in both pictures. He returned to the John Wayne stock company portraying Douglas, the bureaucrat antagonist to Wayne's G.W. McLintock in the Western comedy McLintock, in the spring of 1963. Jones succumbed to a heart attack on June 20, 1963, five months before the release of that movie. He is remembered, however, by millions of Abbott and Costello and John Wayne fans, and also for his work in serials, and he is given a special mention -- in connection with The Green Hornet -- on the home page of the town of his birth, Alden, IA.

Trivia: A stunning blonde from Minnesota, Dani Crayne was offered a Universal stock contract in 1955. After performing the usual starlet duties of leg art and bit parts, she landed the role of Helen of Troy in The Story of Mankind (1957). Unfortunately, the star-studded but low-budget "epic" became a notorious failure and Crayne spent the remainder of her brief career in television Westerns. She was the second wife of actor David Janssen.

Trivia: American actor Trevor Bardette could truly say that he died for a living. In the course of a film career spanning three decades, the mustachioed, granite-featured Bardette was "killed off" over 40 times as a screen villain. Entering movies in 1936 after abandoning a planned mechanical engineering career for the Broadway stage, Bardette was most often seen as a rustler, gangster, wartime collaborator and murderous backwoodsman. His screen skullduggery carried over into TV; one of Bardette's best remembered video performances was as a "human bomb" on an early episode of Superman. Perhaps being something of a reprobate came naturally to Trevor Bardette -- or so he himself would claim in later years when relating a story of how, as a child, he'd won ten dollars writing an essay on "the evils of tobacco," only to be caught smoking behind the barn shortly afterward.

Trivia: Dapper, rotund character actor Don Beddoe was born in New York and raised in Cincinnati, where his father headed the Conservatory of Music. Beddoe's professional career began in Cincinnati, first as a journalist and then an actor. He made his Broadway debut in the unfortunately titled Nigger Rich, which starred Spencer Tracy. Beddoe became a fixture of Columbia Pictures in the 1930s and 1940s, playing minor roles in "A"s like Golden Boy, supporting parts ranging from cops to conventioneers in the studio's "B" features, and flustered comedy foil to the antics of such Columbia short subject stars as The Three Stooges, Andy Clyde and Charley Chase. Beddoe kept busy until the mid-1980s with leading roles in 1961's The Boy Who Caught a Crook and Saintly Sinners, and (as a singing leprechaun) in 1962's Jack the Giant Killer.

Trivia: The face of American actor Myron Healey was not in and of itself villainous. But whenever Healey narrowed his eyes and widened that countenance into a you-know-what-eating grin and exposed those pointed ivories, the audience knew that he was about to rob a bank, hold up a stagecoach, or burn out a homesteader, which he did with regularity after entering films in the postwar years. Still, Healey could temper his villainy with a marvelous sense of humor: for example, his hilarious adlibs while appearing in stock badguy roles in such TV series as Annie Oakley and Gene Autry. With 1949's Colorado Ambush Healey broadened his talents to include screenwriting. Usually heading the supporting cast, Myron Healey was awarded a bonafide lead role in the 1962 horror film Varan the Unbelievable (a Japanese film, with scattered English-language sequences), though even here he seemed poised to stab the titular monster in the back at any moment.

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from 1952.

Trivia: Actor Harry Harvey Sr. started out in minstrel shows and burlesque. His prolific work in Midwestern stock companies led to film assignments, beginning at RKO in 1934. Harvey's avuncular appearance (he looked like every stage doorman named Pop who ever existed) won him featured roles in mainstream films and comic-relief and sheriff parts in B-westerns. His best known "prestige" film assignment was the role of New York Yankees manager Joe McCarthy in the 1942 Lou Gehrig biopic Pride of the Yankees. Remaining active into the TV era, Harry Harvey Sr. had continuing roles on two series, The Roy Rogers Show and It's a Man's World, and showed up with regularity on such video sagebrushers as Cheyenne and Bonanza.

Trivia: As a boy growing up in Sacramento, Robert Warwick sang in his church choir. Encouraged to pursue music as a vocation, Warwick studied in Paris for an operatic career. He abandoned singing for straight acting when, in 1903, he was hired by Clyde Fitch as an understudy in the Broadway play Glad of It. Within a few year, Warwick was a major stage star in New York. He managed to retain his matinee-idol status when he switched from stage to screen, starring in such films as A Modern Othello and Alias Jimmy Valentine and at one point heading his own production company. He returned to the stage in 1920, then resumed his Hollywood career in authoritative supporting roles. His pear-shaped tones ideally suited for talkies, Warwick played such characters as Neptune in Night Life of the Gods (1933), Sir Francis Knolly in Mary of Scotland (1936) and Lord Montague in Romeo and Juliet (1936). He appeared in many of the Errol Flynn "historicals" at Warner Bros. (Prince and the Pauper, Adventures of Robin Hood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex); in more contemporary fare, he could usually be found in a military uniform or wing-collared tuxedo. From The Great McGinty (1940) onward, Warwick was a particular favorite of producer/director Preston Sturges, who was fond of providing plum acting opportunities to veteran character actors. Warwick's best performance under Sturges' guidance was as the brusque Hollywood executive who insists upon injecting "a little sex" in all of his studio's product in Sullivan's Travels (1942). During the 1950s, Warwick played several variations on "Charles Waterman," the broken-down Shakespearean ham that he'd portrayed in In a Lonely Place (1950). He remained in harness until his eighties, playing key roles on such TV series as The Twilight Zone and The Law and Mr. Jones. Robert Warwick was married twice, to actresses Josephine Whittell and Stella Lattimore.

Trivia: American general purpose actor Howard Negley made his screen bow as Nelson in 20th Century Fox's Smokey. Negley went on to reasonably prominent character parts in such B-pictures as Charlie Chan in the Trap (1947). For the most part, he played nameless bit parts as police captains, politicians, and reporters. Howard Negley was last seen as the Twentieth Century Limited conductor in Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959).

Trivia: A sadly neglected supporting actress, Ann Doran played everything from Charley Chase's foil in Columbia two-reelers of the late '30s to James Dean's mother in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and also guest starred in such television shows as Superman, Petticoat Junction, Bewitched, and The A Team. A former child model and the daughter of silent screen actress Rose Allen (1885-1977), Doran made her screen bow in Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922) but then spent the next 12 years or so getting herself an education. She returned to films in 1934 and joined the Columbia short subject department two years later. While with Columbia, Doran worked on all of Frank Capra's films save Lost Horizon (1937) and she later toiled for both Paramount and Warner Bros., often receiving fine reviews but always missing out on the one role that may have made her a star. Appearing in more than 500 films and television shows (her own count), Doran worked well into the 1980s, often unbilled but always a noticeable presence.

Trivia: American actor Lane Bradford spent most of his film career in westerns - and in so doing carried on the tradition of his father, veteran sagebrush villain John Merton. Breaking into movies in bit parts, Bradford's first verified screen role was in 1946's Silver Range. He came a bit too late to flourish in B westerns (which died out in 1954), but Bradford essayed cowpoke roles, usually menacing in nature, until 1968. Once in a while, Bradford would venture far afield from the Old West - notably as the Martian villain Marex in the 1952 Republic serial Zombies of the Stratosphere. Lane Bradford retired to Hawaii shortly after completing his last film, Journey to Shiloh (1968).

Trivia: American actress Frances Morris was seen in small utility roles from 1934 to 1961. At first, Morris was cast as gun molls, stewardesses, secretaries, receptionists, and maids. She was exceptionally busy in the 1940s, essaying a variety of WAVES and WACs. The following decade, she was seen in maternal roles (some of them actually given character names) in both films and TV. One of Frances Morris' better assignments was the sympathetic prison warden in the 1952 Loretta Young starrer Because of You.

Trivia: Chances are when a doctor made a house call in a '40s movie, that doctor was portrayed by Sam Flint. Silver-haired, authoritative, and distinguished by an executive-style moustache, Flint entered films in the early '30s after a long stage career. Though his movie roles were usually confined to one or two scenes per picture, Flint was always instantly recognizable in his characterizations of businessmen, bankers, chairmen of the board, politicians, publishers, fathers of the bride--and, as mentioned before, doctors. In addition to his prolific feature-film work, Sam Flint was always welcome in short subjects, appearing in support of everyone from Our Gang to the Three Stooges.

Trivia: Beginning his stage career in his native Holland in 1927, Phil Van Zandt moved to America shortly afterward, continuing to make theatrical appearances into the late '30s. From his first film (Those High Gray Walls [1939]) onward, the versatile Van Zandt was typed as "everyday" characters whenever he chose not to wear his mustache; with the 'stache, however, his face took on a sinister shade, and he found himself playing such cinematic reprobates as evil caliphs, shady attorneys, and heartless Nazis. Because of deliberately shadowy photography, the audience barely saw Van Zandt's face at all in one of his best roles, as the Henry Luce-like magazine editor Rawlston in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Though many of his feature-film assignments were bits, Van Zandt was permitted generous screen time in his many appearances in two-reel comedies. Beginning with the Gus Schilling/Dick Lane vehicle Pardon My Terror (1946), Van Zandt was a fixture at the Columbia Pictures short subjects unit, usually playing crooks and mad scientists at odds with the Three Stooges. He established his own acting school in Hollywood in the 1950s, though this and other ventures ultimately failed. Philip Van Zandt died of a drug overdose at the age of 54.

Trivia: "A very funny guy -- funnier than most gave him credit for," as one director described him, lanky, slow-moving Guy Wilkerson is fondly remembered for playing comedy sidekick Panhandle Perkins in the 1942-1945 PRC Texas Rangers film series, a low-rent competition for Republic Pictures' popular Three Mesquiteers Westerns. As Panhandle, Wilkerson's comedy was never intrusive and often used merely as a slow-witted counterpoint to the action. In Hollywood from at least 1937 (some sources claim he appeared onscreen as early as the 1920s), Wilkerson had honed his skills in minstrel shows, burlesque, and vaudeville, but away from his sidekick duties at PRC, he was usually seen playing less humorous characters, notably ministers or undertakers. Appearing in hundreds of feature films and television series over three decades, Guy Wilkerson was last seen in the crime thriller The Todd Killings in 1971, the year of his death from cancer.

Trivia: Scrawny supporting actor Syd Saylor managed to parlay a single comic shtick -- bobbing his adam's apple -- into a four-decade career. He starred in several silent two-reel comedies from 1926 through 1927, then settled into character parts. During the late '30s and early '40s, Saylor frequently found himself in B-Westerns as the comical sidekick for many a six-gun hero, though he seldom lasted very long in any one series. Syd Saylor was still plugging away into the 1950s, playing "old-timer" bits in such films as Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and Jackpot (1950), and such TV series as Burns and Allen and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Trivia: Though born in the American Midwest, Henry Rowland had heavily Teutonic facial features, making him an invaluable commodity in wartime films. Rowland "heiled" and "achtunged" his way through films ranging from 1942's Casablanca to 1975's Russ Meyer's Supervixens, in which he played a suspicious old coot named Martin Borman! Conversely, he showed up as an American flight surgeon in 1944's Winged Victory, billed under his military ranking as Corporal Henry Rowland. In his last years, Rowland continued playing such Germanic characters as the Amish farmer in 1975's The Frisco Kid.

Trivia: Australian actress Marjorie Bennett made her first film appearances in the pre-World War I years at the suggestion of her sister, silent film star Enid Bennett. Marjorie wasn't yet under the spell of the acting bug, so she abandoned performing for several years, re-emerging as a stage rather than screen actress. She returned to films in the late 1940s as a character player, notably in Charles Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Limelight (1952). A prolific film and TV performer of the 1950s and 1960s, Marjorie Bennett was usually cast as huffy society matrons and haughty domestics; her massive bulk and easily outraged demeanor made her a perfect straight woman for such iconoclastic comedians as Red Skelton and the Three Stooges.

Trivia: A blonde leading lady of horror flicks and B-Westerns, Marjorie Stapp from Little Rock, AR, worked as a secretary for mobster Bugsy Siegel -- "but I didn't know it until he was murdered and I recognized his picture in the papers," she later stated. She also had a walk-on in Danny Kaye's The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), then returned to school until signing with 20th Century Fox in 1949. She didn't do much for Fox, however, but did pop up in two Durango Kid B-Western entries for Columbia -- Laramie and The Blazing Trail (1949) -- as well as playing Queen Guinevere in the serial Adventures of Sir Galahad (1949). Stapp's modicum of fame, however, rests with her sometimes rather brief appearances in low-budget horror and sci-fi movies of the 1950s, including The Indestructible Man (1956), The Monster That Challenged the World (1957), and Kronos (1957). Extremely busy on television as well, Stapp popped up in such diverse series as The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, The Millionaire, Ann Sothern, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Brady Bunch, Jake and the Fatman, Quantum Leap, and a 1991 Columbo TV-movie Death Hits the Jackpot.

Trivia: The politically incorrect term for the sort of roles played by actress Nancy Kulp is "spinsterish." The daughter of a stockbroker, Kulp served as a WAVE lieutenant during World War II, specializing in electronics. A graduate of Florida State and the University of Miami, she worked as a newspaper and radio reporter before entering television as a continuity editor and news director at Miami's first TV station. Through the auspices of her then-husband, a New York television producer, Kulp began picking up small film and TV acting assignments, usually playing frontierswomen, stern maiden aunts or lovelorn professional girls. Impressed by her gift for comedy, producer Paul Henning cast Kulp in the 1950s TV sitcom Love That Bob as birdwatcher Pamela Livingston. This in turn led to a longer (1962-71) stint on the Henning-produced Beverly Hillbillies, in which Kulp played ultraefficient bank secretary Jane Hathaway. After the cancellation of Hillbillies, Nancy Kulp did a great deal of summer stock and dinner theater, returning to television to re-create "Miss Jane" for a 1981 Beverly Hillbillies reunion special.

Trivia: Six-foot-tall American actor Rory Mallinson launched his screen career at the end of WW II. Mallinson was signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1945, making his first appearance in Price of the Marines. In 1947, he began free-lancing at Republic, Columbia and other "B"-picture mills. One of his larger roles was Hodge in the 1952 Columbia serial Blackhawk. Rory Mallinson made his last film in 1963.

Trivia: A University of Florida football star, Dale Van Sickel entered films in the very early '30s as an extra. Playing hundreds of bit parts at almost every studio in Hollywood, Van Sickel earned his true fame as one of Republic Pictures' famous stuntmen, specializing in fisticuffs and car stunts. He appeared in nearly all the studio's serials in the 1940s, including The Tiger Woman (1944), The Purple Monster Strikes (1945), and The Black Widow (1947), almost always playing several bit roles as well. Often the studio cast their leading men because of their resemblance to Van Sickel and the other members of the serial stunt fraternity that included Tom Steele, Dave Sharpe, and Ted Mapes. A founding member and the first president of the Stuntmen's Association of Motion Pictures, Van Sickel later performed in innumerable television shows as well as such diverse feature films as Spartacus (1960), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), and The Love Bug (1969).

Trivia: Born in Northern Australia, Gil Perkins distinguished himself in his teen years as a champion athlete, trackman and swimmer. Perkins left his homeland at age 18 to go to sea; nearly a decade later he found himself in Hollywood, where he sought out acting roles, the first of which was in The Divine Lady (1928). Though a personable screen presence, he found that his true forte was stunt work. Over a period of thirty years, he doubled for dozens of male stars, from William Boyd ("Hopalong Cassidy") to Red Skelton (whom he closely resembled). While he was willing to tackle the riskiest of stunts, Perkins was far from reckless, always working out in advance the safest and least painful method of pulling off his "gags." He was especially in demand for slapstick comedies, eventually receiving so many pies in the face that the very sight of the pastry made him physically ill. Perkins did more acting than stunting in the latter stages of his career (he can be seen as Jacob of Bethlehem in 1965's The Greatest Story Ever Told), and also kept busy as a stunt coordinator. A most engaging and candid interview with Gil Perkins can be found in Bernard Rosenberg and Harry Silverstein's 1970 book of Hollywood reminiscences, The Real Tinsel.

Trivia: General purpose actor Harry Lauter began showing up in films around 1948. Long associated with Columbia Pictures, Lauter appeared in featured roles in such major releases as The Big Heat (1953), Hellcats of the Navy (1957) and The Last Hurrah (1958). He also acted in the studio's "B"-western and horror product. Making occasional visits to Republic, Lauter starred in three serials: Canadian Mounties vs. the Atomic Invaders (1953), Trader Tom of the China Seas (1954) and King of the Carnival (1956), Republic's final chapter play. On TV, he co-starred with Preston Foster in Waterfront (1954) and was second-billed as Ranger Clay Morgan in Tales of the Texas Rangers (1955-59). After appearing in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Harry Lauter retired from acting to concentrate on painting and managing his art and antique gallery.

Trivia: Despite his less than masculine moniker, Carol Henry was a tough-looking hombre who appeared in countless B-Westerns and quite a few serials of the 1940s. Often cast as a henchman, Henry could also play stage drivers, townsmen, or even, as in Three Desperate Men (1951), a lawman. When B-Westerns bit the dust in the early '50s, Henry went into television, where he appeared on such popular shows as The Cisco Kid, Wild Bill Hickock, Wagon Train, and Cimarron Strip. He retired in the late 1960s.

Trivia: Canadian-born general-purpose actor George Pembroke is perhaps best remembered as Dr. Saunders, the leader of the fifth columnists in Bela Lugosi's Black Dragons (1942) and as the police inspector posing as an art connoisseur in the semi-classic Bluebeard (1944). In Hollywood from 1937, Pembroke made serials somewhat of a specialty, appearing in Drums of Fu Manchu (1940), Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), Perils of Nyoka (1942), Captain Midnight (1942), and Daredevils of the West (1943). He later became a frequent guest star on television's The Lone Ranger and Gene Autry.

Trivia: American silent screen cowboy Buddy Roosevelt came to Hollywood in 1914 with the C.B. Irwin Wild West Show. Working primarily as a stunt man in William S. Hart Westerns at Triangle, Roosevelt was earning 22 dollars a week plus board when World War I took him overseas. Working his way back to Hollywood after the Armistice, Roosevelt doubled Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (1920), as well as William Desmond. Universal starred him as Kent Sanderson in the two-reeler Down in Texas (1923), but he somehow fell between the cracks at that studio, signing instead a personal contract with independent producer Lester F. Scott Jr. Scott didn't like the name Kent Sanderson and changed it to Buddy Roosevelt, in honor of former president Theodore Roosevelt. Making 25 fast-paced Westerns for Scott's Action Pictures, the former stunt man proved to be an acceptable actor who did not look the fool even with the heavy doses of comedy that Scott seemed to favor. Unfortunately, the Roosevelt budgets deteriorated as Scott brought Buffalo Bill Jr. and Wally Wales into the fold and Roosevelt bolted in January 1928, in favor of Rayart. With the veteran J.P. McGowan at the helm, Roosevelt continued to do strong work, but sound interrupted what could have been a career on the upswing. He was tested for the lead in the Fox Western In Old Arizona (1929), but a broken leg caused him to be replaced by Warner Baxter, who, of course, went on to earn an Academy Award for his role as the Cisco Kid. A chance to star in a new series reportedly went out the window when Mrs. Roosevelt, a cousin of Clark Gable, got into an argument with the producer, ex-stunt man Paul Malvern; John Wayne earned the berth instead and the rest, as they say, is history. There would be a few Western leads to come, but only for bottom-rung producers such as Jack Irwin and Victor Adamson. Roosevelt continued playing bits in Westerns through the early '60s, however; his final role -- a mere walk-on -- came in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Retiring to his hometown in Colorado, Buddy Roosevelt kept up a correspondence with Western fans from around the world.