Trivia: The son of a New York University professor of marketing, American actor James Drury spent his youth dividing his time between Manhattan and Oregon, where his mother ran a ranch. At age 8, Drury made his stage debut as King Herod-- crepe beard and all--in a Christmas production at a Greenwich Village settlement house. Sidelined by polio at age 10, Drury became a voracious reader, often acting out the characters in the books. At NYU, Drury dove full-force into acting, developing his craft to such an extent that in 1954 he was signed by MGM. His film roles were of the "other guy in the room" calibre (Forbidden Planet [1956]), so Drury's contract lapsed, after which he spent time at 20th Century-Fox in support of Pat Boone (Bernardine [1957]) and Elvis Presley (Love Me Tender [1958]). In 1958, Drury was cast by Screen Gems studios in a TV pilot film based on the Owen Wister story The Virginian. It didn't sell, but in 1962 Universal optioned the rights to The Virginian, bringing Drury in along for the ride. He spent the next nine years in The Virginian, during which time Drury's reputation for recalcitrance on the set and reluctance to reveal anything of himself in interviews earned him the soubriquet "The Garbo of the Sagebrush" (a nickname bestowed by Drury's father!) James Drury wasn't seen much after The Virginian, though he did show up on the small screen as the lead in an Emergency clone titled Firehouse, which ran on the ABC network for eight months in 1974.

Trivia: Raw-boned blonde leading man Doug McClure came to films in 1957, but it was television that made him a star. He played secondary roles on such MCA series as The Overland Trail (1960) and Checkmate (1961-62) before striking paydirt as Trampas on the long-running (1962-71) western series The Virginian. During his first flush of stardom, McClure played leads in two Universal remakes, Beau Geste (1966) and The King's Pirate (the 1967 remake of Errol Flynn's Against All Flags). He also dashed through a trio of British-filmed Edgar Rice Burroughs derivations, The Land That Time Forgot (1974), At the Earth's Core (1976) and The People That Time Forgot (1977). He perpetuated his athletic, devil-may-care image into his brief 1975 TVer, Search (1975). In the late 1980s, Doug McClure reemerged as an agreeable comic actor, playing an Eastwoodish movie-star-cum-small-town-mayor in the syndicated sitcom Out of This World (1987-88).

Trivia: Actor Clu Gulager started out as the latest in a long line of Brando/Dean "method" types in the late 1950s. Gulager's searing interpretation of Mad Dog Coll on a 1959 episode of The Untouchables, coupled with his multi-faceted portrayal of Billy the Kid on the TV western series The Tall Man (1960-62) gained him a brief fan following. He was also quite impressive as Lee Marvin's fellow hit man in The Killers (1964), which would have been the very first made-for-TV movie had not its excessive violence necessitated a theatrical release. Turning prematurely gray in the late 1960s, Gulager went on to play flinty authority figures on such weekly series as The Survivors (1969), San Francisco International Airport (1971) and The MacKenzies of Paradise Cove (1979). He was also seen in numerous miniseries, most prominently as Lt. Merrick in Once an Eagle (1976) and General Sheridan in North and South II (1986). One of his better big-screen roles was Abilene in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971). Briefly entertaining notions of becoming a film director, Clu Gulager helmed the obscure 1969 short subject A Day with the Boys.

Trivia: Hard-fighting, strong, durable redhead Charles Bickford graduated from MIT before he began appearing in burlesque in 1914. After serving in World War I, he started a career on Broadway in 1919. He didn't come to Hollywood until the birth of the Sound Era in 1929. His first film was Cecil B. DeMille's Dynamite, during the production of which, he punched out DeMille. He became a star after playing Greta Garbo's lover in Anna Christie (1930), but didn't develop into a romantic lead, instead becoming a powerful character actor whose screen appearances commanded attention throughout a career spanning almost four decades, in films such as Duel in the Sun (1946) and Johnny Belinda (1948). His craggy, intense features lent themselves to roles as likable fathers, businessmen, captains, etc. He sometimes played stubborn or unethical roles, but more often projected honesty or warmth. He co-authored a play, The Cyclone Lover (1928) and wrote an autobiography, Bulls, Balls, Bicycles, and Actors (1965). He was Oscar-nominated three times but never won the award. Late in his life he starred in the TV show The Virginian.

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: If Harrison Ford had listened to the advice of studio heads early in his career, he would have remained a carpenter and never gone on to star in some of Hollywood's biggest films and become one of the industry's most bankable stars. Born July 13, 1942, in Chicago and raised in a middle-class suburb, he had an average childhood. An introverted loner, he was popular with girls but picked on by school bullies. Ford quietly endured their everyday tortures until he one day lost his cool and beat the tar out of the gang leader responsible for his being repeatedly thrown off an embankment. He had no special affinity for films and usually only went to see them on dates because they were inexpensive and dark. Following high school graduation, Ford studied English and Philosophy at Ripon College in Wisconsin. An admittedly lousy student, he began acting while in college and then worked briefly in summer stock. He was expelled from the school three days before graduation because he did not complete his required thesis. In the mid-'60s, Ford and his first wife, Mary Marquardt (his college sweetheart) moved to Hollywood, where he signed as a contract player with Columbia and, later, Universal. After debuting onscreen in a bit as a bellboy in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966), he played secondary roles, typically a cowboy, in several films of the late '60s and in such TV series as Gunsmoke, The Virginian, and Ironside. Discouraged with both the roles he was getting and his difficulty in providing for his young family, he abandoned acting and taught himself carpentry via books borrowed from the local library. Using his recently purchased run-down Hollywood home for practice, Ford proved himself a talented woodworker, and, after successfully completing his first contract to build an out-building for Sergio Mendez, found himself in demand with other Hollywood residents (it was also during this time that Ford acquired his famous scar, the result of a minor car accident). Meanwhile, Ford's luck as an actor began to change when a casting director friend for whom he was doing some construction helped him get a part in George Lucas' American Graffiti (1973). The film became an unexpected blockbuster and greatly increased Ford's familiarity. Many audience members, particularly women, responded to his turn as the gruffly macho Bob Falfa, the kind of subtly charismatic portrayal that would later become Ford's trademark. However, Ford's career remained stagnant until Lucas cast him as space pilot Han Solo in the megahit Star Wars (1977), after which he became a minor star. He spent the remainder of the 1970s trapped in mostly forgettable films (such as the comedy Western The Frisco Kid with Gene Wilder), although he did manage to land the small role of Colonel G. Lucas in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979). The early '80s elevated Ford to major stardom with the combined impact of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and his portrayal of action-adventure hero Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which proved to be an enormous hit. He went on to play "Indy" twice more, in 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989. Ford moved beyond popular acclaim with his role as a big-city police detective who finds himself masquerading as an Amish farmer to protect a young murder witness in Witness (1984), for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his work, as well as the praise of critics who had previously ignored his acting ability. Having appeared in several of the biggest money-makers of all time, Ford was able to pick and choose his roles in the '80s and '90s. Following the success of Witness, Ford re-teamed with the film's director, Peter Weir, to make a film adaptation of Paul Theroux's novel The Mosquito Coast. The film met with mixed critical results, and audiences largely stayed away, unused to the idea of their hero playing a markedly flawed and somewhat insane character. Undeterred, Ford went on to choose projects that brought him further departure from the action films responsible for his reputation. In 1988 he worked with two of the industry's most celebrated directors, Roman Polanski and Mike Nichols. With Polanski he made Frantic, a dark psychological thriller that fared poorly among critics and audiences alike. He had greater success with Nichols, his director in Working Girl, a saucy comedy in which he co-starred with Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver. The film was a hit, and displayed Ford's largely unexploited comic talent. Ford began the 1990s with Alan J. Pakula's courtroom thriller Presumed Innocent, which he followed with another Mike Nichols outing, Regarding Henry (1991). The film was an unmitigated flop with both critics and audiences, but Ford allayed his disappointment the following year when he signed an unprecedented 50-million-dollar contract to play CIA agent Jack Ryan in a series of five movies based upon the novels of Tom Clancy. The first two films of the series, Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), met with an overwhelming success mirrored by that of Ford's turn as Dr. Richard Kimball in The Fugitive (1993). Ford's next effort, Sydney Pollack's 1995 remake of Sabrina, did not meet similar success, and this bad luck continued with The Devil's Own (which reunited him with Pakula), despite Ford's seemingly fault-proof pairing with Brad Pitt. However, his other 1997 effort, Wolfgang Petersen's Air Force One, more than made up for the critical and commercial shortcomings of his previous two films, proving that Ford, even at 55, was still a bona fide, butt-kicking action hero. Stranded on an island with Anne Hesche for his next feature, the moderately successful romantic adventure Six Days, Seven Nights (1998), Ford subsequently appeared in the less successful romantic drama Random Hearts. Bouncing back a bit with Robert Zemeckis' horror-flavored thriller What Lies Beneath, the tension would remain at a fever pitch as Ford and crew raced to prevent a nuclear catastrophe in the fact based deep sea thriller K-19: The Widowmaker. As the 2000's unfolded, Ford would prove that he had a strong commitment to being active in film, continuing to work in projects like Hollywood Homicide, Firewall, Extraordinary Measures, Morning Glory, and Cowboys & Aliens. Ford would also reprise one of his most famous roles for the disappointing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Trivia: The son of a brewery owner, steely-eyed American character actor Paul Fix went the vaudeville and stock-company route before settling in Hollywood in 1926. During the 1930s and 1940s he appeared prolifically in varied fleeting roles: a transvestite jewel thief in the Our Gang two-reeler Free Eats (1932), a lascivious zookeeper (appropriately named Heinie) in Zoo in Budapest (1933), a humorless gangster who puts Bob Hope "on the spot" in The Ghost Breakers (1940), and a bespectacled ex-convict who muscles his way into Berlin in Hitler: Dead or Alive (1943), among others. During this period, Fix was most closely associated with westerns, essaying many a villainous (or at least untrustworthy) role at various "B"-picture mills. In the mid-1930s, Fix befriended young John Wayne and helped coach the star-to-be in the whys and wherefores of effective screen acting. Fix ended up appearing in 27 films with "The Duke," among them Pittsburgh (1942), The Fighting Seabees (1943), Tall in the Saddle (1944), Back to Bataan (1945), Red River (1948) and The High and the Mighty (1954). Busy in TV during the 1950s, Fix often found himself softening his bad-guy image to portray crusty old gents with golden hearts-- characters not far removed from the real Fix, who by all reports was a 100% nice guy. His most familiar role was as the honest but often ineffectual sheriff Micah Torrance on the TV series The Rifleman. In the 1960s, Fix was frequently cast as sagacious backwoods judges and attorneys, as in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

Trivia: American character actor of stage, screen, and TV Lee J. Cobb, born Leo Jacob or Jacoby, was usually seen scowling and smoking a cigar. As a child, Cobb showed artistic promise as a virtuoso violinist, but any hope for a musical career was ended by a broken wrist. He ran away from home at age 17 and ended up in Hollywood. Unable to find film work there, he returned to New York and acted in radio dramas while going to night school at CCNY to learn accounting. Returning to California in 1931, he made his stage debut with the Pasadena Playhouse. Back in New York in 1935, he joined the celebrated Group Theater and appeared in several plays with them, including Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy. He began his film career in 1937, going on to star and play supporting roles in dozens of films straight through to the end of his life. Cobb was most frequently cast as menacing villains, but sometimes appeared as a brooding business executive or community leader. His greatest triumph on stage came in the 1949 production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman in which he played the lead role, Willy Loman (he repeated his performance in a 1966 TV version). Between 1962-66, he also appeared on TV in the role of Judge Garth in the long-running series The Virginian. He was twice nominated for "Best Supporting Actor" Oscars for his work in On the Waterfront (1954) and The Brothers Karamazov (1958).

Trivia: Endearing herself to television audiences as the devoted sitcom wife of Robert Young on Father Knows Best, petite brunette actress Jane Wyatt also essayed frequent big-screen roles highlighted by memorable performances in such films as Lost Horizon (1937), in which she plays Sondra, the lover of Robert Conway (Ronald Colman). Born in Campgaw, NJ, on August 12, 1910, to an investment banker father and a drama critic mother, and raised as a Manhattanite from age three, Wyatt received her formal education at the Chapin School and -- very briefly -- at New York City's Barnard College, where she spent two listless years. Following the irresistible call of the stage, Wyatt bucked university life in favor of honing her acting skills at Berkshire Playhouse in the western Massachusetts community of Stockbridge. Shortly after this, she accepted a position as understudy to Rose Hobart in a Broadway production of Trade Winds. Universal soon took note of Wyatt's talents and offered her a film role, in Frankenstein director James Whale's One More River (1934). Wyatt embarked on a lucrative screen career following her impressive debut, and many consider the performance in Lost Horizon her crowning achievement, though additional cinematic work throughout the 1940s proved both steady and rewarding. Following memorable performances in Clifford Odets' None But the Lonely Heart (1944) (alongside Cary Grant) and Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement (1947, with Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire), the now-established actress transitioned smoothly into television in the early '50s, given her standing role as the matriarch of the Anderson family (mother of Bud, Princess, and Kitten, and wife of Jim) on the long-running CBS sitcom Father Knows Best. Wyatt deservedly won three Emmys for that role, and remained with the program over the course of its six-year run of original episodes. (Riding the crest of high ratings, CBS stretched prime-time reruns into the spring of 1963.) This marked the only major recurring prime-time role of Wyatt's career, though (alongside the work of others such as Barbara Billingsley and Harriet Nelson) it did much to establish the now-iconic image of the "archetypal 1950s sitcom mother," and earned the actress a beloved spot in American pop-culture history. In addition to this, Wyatt made occasional appearances, during the Father Knows Best run, on a dramatic anthology series headlined by her small-screen husband, Robert Montgomery Presents (NBC, 1950-1957). Six years after new episodes of Father wrapped, Star Trek landed on NBC, and Wyatt turned up occasionally on that program, as Mr. Spock's mother, Amanda Spock. She also made a guest appearance, alongside the late Bob Cummings, on the early-'70s comedic anthology series Love, American Style (the two play parents who are overanxious about their daughter's decision to embark on a European "swingers' holiday" with a boyfriend). If the preponderance of Wyatt's roles in the '70s, '80s, and '90s were largely supporting turns, it certainly said nothing about the actress' talent. She remained in the public eye as a fixture of such made-for-television features as You'll Never See Me Again (1973) and Amelia Earhart (1976). Though she entered semi-retirement in the late '70s, Wyatt later appeared (very infrequently) as an occasional supporting character in television's St. Elsewhere and reprised her role as Spock's mother in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).On October 20, 2006, after years of inactivity, Jane Wyatt died of natural causes in her sleep, at her home in Bel Air, CA. She was 96.