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: Whitman College graduate Adam West began getting his first acting breaks in 1959. That was the year that West, newly signed to a Warner Bros. contract, was cast in the small but pivotal role of Diane Brewster's impotent husband in The Young Philadelphians. After two years' worth of guest-star assignments in Warners' TV product (he was hung by his heels and humiliated by James Garner in a memorable Maverick episode), West accepted the role of Sergeant Steve Nelson on the weekly TVer Robert Taylor's Detectives. In 1962, the series was cancelled, compelling West to free-lance in such films as Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964, as the astronaut who doesn't make it back) and Island of the Blue Dolphins (1964). In 1965, he landed his biggest and best role to date: Millionaire Bruce Wayne, aka the "Caped Crusader", on the smash TV series Batman. Approaching the role with the seriousness and sobriety usually afforded MacBeth or Hamlet, West struck the happy medium between "camp" and conviction. Though in recent years West has apparently basked in the adulation he has received for his two-year stint as Batman, at the time the series was cancelled in 1968, he vowed to distance himself as far from the character as possible, accepting villainous TV and film roles and even fitfully pursuing a singing career. His movie projects ranged from sublime (Marriage of a Young Stockbroker, Hooper) to ridiculous (The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington); no matter what the role, however, West's performance was invariably compared to his Batman work. Finally adopting an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" stance, West began making appearances at nostalgia conventions, supplied his vocal talents to the 1977 animated series The New Adventures of Batman, and publicly expressed disappointment that he was not offered a cameo role in the 1989 big-screen blockbuster Batman (he did however, provide a voice-over for the 1992 Fox TV series Batman: The New Adventures, not as Batman but as a washed-up superhero called the Gray Ghost). Adam West's most recent TV projects have included the weekly series The Last Precinct (1986) and Danger Theatre (1993); he also served as a spokesperson for the Nickelodeon cable network, a service specializing in nostalgia-inducing reruns.He continued to work steadily, often trading in on his own history as a caped crusader. He appeared in the comedy The New Age and Drop Dead Gorgeous. At the dawn of the 21st century he took a regular gig voicing the role of Mayor Adam West on the animated series The Family Guy., a gig that led to more animated work in projects such as Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons. He spoofed his superhero history yet again in 2008's Super Capers and appeared as himself on an episode of The Big Bang Theory. West died in 2017, at age 88.

Trivia: Born in France, blonde leading lady Andrea King was educated in the United States. In 1944, King was signed to a Warner Bros. film contract. She spent much of her time in femme fatale assignments, with the occasional sympathetic lead in films like The Beast With Five Fingers (1946). The best of her Warners efforts was Hotel Berlin (1945), in which King plays a Nazi sympathizer who pays for her treachery when she is shot to death by underground operative Helmut Dantine. After her many tough, vitriolic 1940s assignments, it was a little depressing to watch King play a humorless Christian zealot in the 1952 sci-fier Red Planet Mars. Ostensibly retired by 1973, Andrea King made an unexpected but welcome return appearance in the off-the-wall comedy The Linguini Incident (1992).

Trivia: William D. Gordon got his start writing for radio programs like "The Cisco Kid," "The Tommy Dorsey Show" and "Count of Monte Cristo" during the mid-1930s. In 1939, Gordon began directing early, early television shows for the Mutual Don Lee Network, California and continued working in television and radio in various capacities, including director, producer, announcer, and actor through the early 1950s. He began writing teleplays for the series Maverick and Riverboat in 1959. He continued writing for television nighttime dramas and daytime series through the early 1980s. Gordon also directed Queen for a Day and helped produce, write and edit the television series CHiPs with James Doherty from 1977 to 1982. Upon retirement, Gordon began writing novels about the Civil War.

Trivia: Brooklyn native Connie Stevens is the daughter of musician Teddy Stevens. She moved with her dad to L.A., where she enrolled at Sacred Professional School, sang professional, and appeared in local repertory productions. After several low-budget teen flicks, Stevens was given a break in an A-picture, Jerry Lewis' Rock-a-Bye Baby (1958). Soon afterward, she was signed by Warner Bros. to play bouncy nightclub thrush Cricket Blake on the TV detective series Hawaiian Eye. She also starred in such WB feature films as Susan Slade (1961), and became a popular recording artist with her rendition of the deathless "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb." Warners suspended Stevens in 1962 over several bones of contention, one of which was her snit-fit after being denied a chance to audition for the lead in the studio's My Fair Lady. She patched up her differences with Warners long enough to play a Gracie Allen clone in the George Burns-produced sitcom Wendy and Me (1964). After her flurry of fame in the 1960s, Stevens kept busy with nightclub appearances and summer theater productions. She appeared in the Broadway production of The Star Spangled Girl, guested in such all-star movie efforts as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) and Grease 2, and accepted a regular role on the 1986 TV series Rowdies. Among Connie Stevens' three husbands were actors James Stacy and Eddie Fisher.

Trivia: Born into a family of travelling show folk, Lyle Talbot toured the hinterlands as a teen-aged magician. Talbot went on to work as a regional stock-company actor, pausing long enough in Memphis to form his own troupe, the Talbot Players. Like many other barnstorming performers of the 1920s, Talbot headed to Hollywood during the early-talkie era. Blessed with slick, lounge-lizard good looks, he started out as a utility lead at Warner Bros. Talbot worked steadily throughout the 1930s, playing heroes in B pictures and supporting parts in A pictures. During a loanout to Monogram Pictures in 1932, he was afforded an opportunity to co-star with Ginger Rogers in a brace of entertaining mysteries, The 13th Guest and The Shriek and the Night, which were still making the double-feature rounds into the 1940s. In 1935, Talbot and 23 other film players organized the Screen Actors Guild; to the end of his days, he could be counted upon to proudly display his SAG Card #4 at the drop of a hat. As his hairline receded and his girth widened, Talbot became one of Hollywood's busiest villains. He worked extensively in serials, playing characters on both sides of the law; in 1949 alone, he could be seen as above-suspicion Commissioner Gordon in Batman and Robin and as duplicitous Lex Luthor in Atom Man Vs. Superman. He remained in harness in the 1950s, appearing on Broadway and television. Two of his better-known assignments from this period were Joe Randolph on TV's The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and as Bob Cummings' lascivious Air Force buddy Paul Fonda on Love That Bob. Seemingly willing to work for anyone who met his price, Talbot had no qualms about appearing in the dregs of cheapo horror films of the fifties. He was prominently cast in two of the estimable Edward D. Wood's "classics," Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan Nine From Outer Space (1955). When asked what it was like to work for the gloriously untalented Wood, Talbot would recall with amusement that the director never failed to pay him up front for each day's work with a handful of stained, crinkly ten-dollar bills. Though he made his last film in 1960, Lyle Talbot continued touring in theatrical productions well into the late 1970s, regaling local talk-show hosts with his bottomless reserve of anecdotes from his three decades in Hollywood.

Trivia: Mississippi-born Roscoe Ates spent a good portion of his childhood overcoming a severe stammer. Entering show business as a concert violinist, the shriveled, pop-eyed Ates found the money was better as a vaudeville comedian, reviving his long-gone stutter for humorous effect. In films from 1929, Ates appeared in sizeable roles in such films as The Champ (1931), Freaks (1932) and Alice in Wonderland (1933), and also starred in his own short subject series with RKO and Vitaphone. Though his trademarked stammer is something of an endurance test when seen today, it paid off in big laughs in the 1930s, when speech impediments were considered the ne plus ultra of hilarity. By the late 1930s Ates's popularity waned, and he was reduced to unbilled bits in such films as Gone with the Wind (1939) and Dixie (1942). His best showing during the 1940s was as comic sidekick to singing cowboy Eddie Dean in a series of 15 low-budget westerns. Remaining busy in films and on TV into the 1960s, Roscoe Ates made his last appearance in the 1961 Jerry Lewis comedy The Errand Boy.

Trivia: Bald, hook-nosed character actor John Harmon launched his film career in 1939. Harmon's screen assignments ranged from shifty-eyed gangsters, rural law enforcement officials and hen-pecked husbands. He was seen in films as diverse as Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and the "B" horror flick Monster of Piedra Blancas. Star Trek fans will remember John Harmon for his supporting role in the 1967 episode "City on the Edge of Forever."