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: Carnegie Tech alumnus Gretchen Corbett made her professional acting bow with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Corbett's first New York stage appearance was in a 1967 revival of Shaw's Arms and the Man. While specializing in the classics on-stage, her film assignments were on a less artistically lofty plane. Her first film was 1969's Out of It, followed by such credits as Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971) and the made-for-TV Mandrake (1979). Gretchen Corbett's TV-series obligations have included a lengthy run as attorney Beth Davenport on The Rockford Files (1974-1980) and reluctant parallel-universe denizen June Sterling on Otherworld (1985).

Trivia: The son of Broadway actress Mary Martin, Larry Hagman was born September 21st, 1931 in Fort Worth, Texas. After his parents divorced, he lived with his grandmother in California until the time of her death. Hagman, 12 years old at the time, then returned to his mother who was working on the Broadway stage. After attending Bard College in Anandale-on-the-Hudson for one year, his own early efforts at breaking into showbiz began at the Margo Jones Theatre-in-the-Round in Dallas, and soon after in The Taming of the Shrew at the New York City Center. While working as a cast member on his mother's hit show South Pacific, Hagman took up residence in England and ended up staying there for five years. During that time he joined the U.S. Air Force where he found time to produce and direct several theater productions. It was also during that time that he met and fell in love with Maj Axelsson, a young Swedish designer. They were married in December of 1954. Back in the U.S., Hagman began to make progress in his career, tallying up several TV guest-star appearances (including, presciently, a smiling villain on an episode of Sea Hunt), a regular role as lawyer Ed Gibson on the daytime soap opera The Edge of Night, and a beautifully played supporting role as a Russian/ English interpreter in the nuclear nailbiter Fail Safe. In 1965, Hagman received his most prominent acting assignment to date as eternally flustered astronaut Tony Nelson on the TV sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. After five years of Jeannie, Hagman took a few film and TV-movie parts, co-starred with Donna Mills on the 1971 sitcom The Good Life, co-starred with Lauren Bacall in the TV rendition of the Broadway musical Applesauce, acted and directed in the low-grade horror spoof Beware! The Blob. Hagman's best-ever TV stint was as the charming but conniving J. R. Ewing on the nighttime TV serial Dallas, a role he played from 1978 through 1990. At first reluctant to accept the role, Hagman acknowledges that it was his wife Maj's encouragement that convinced him to do the series. Proof of Hagman's drawing power as J.R. came when, at the end of the 1979-80 season, the character was shot down by a mysterious assailant--setting the stage for the "Who Shot J.R.?" episode, one of the highest-rated telecasts of all time. After the cancellation of Dallas in 1991, Hagman was forced to slow down his busy schedule due to an ongoing battle with liver cancer, and in August of 1995 he was the recipient of a liver transplant, a procedure that saved his life. Hagman's public life has always included a variety of civic and philanthropic undertakings. A staunch non-smoker, Hagman acted as the chairperson of the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout for nine years, and following his 1995 surgery, he became the National Spokesperson for the 1996 U.S. Transplant Games sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation and was recognized by the foundation for his role in increasing public awareness in regards to organ donation. In 1997, Hagman made a television comeback as the Honorable Judge Luther Charbonnet in the critically acclaimed CBS series Orleans, and in 1998 he appeared in the popular political satire Primary Colors. Hagman resumed his portrayal of J.R. Ewing opposite Patrick Duffy and Linda Gray for the well-received TNT revival of Dallas that began in the summer of 2012, but that turn was short lived; in November of that year, the actor succumbed to complications from cancer. He was 81.

Trivia: When asked why he decided upon becoming an actor, Joe Santos tended to trot out the tried-and-true rationale "because I failed at everything else." While attending Fordham University, Santos excelled at football, but lost interest in the sport after a few semi-pro years. By the time he was 30, Santos had been remarkably unsuccessful in a variety of vocations, including railroad worker, tree cutter, automobile importer and tavern owner. While working a construction job in New York, Santos was invited by a friend to sit in on an acting class. This seemed like an easy way to make a living, so Santos began making the audition rounds, almost immediately landing a good part on a TV soap opera. This gig unfortunately led nowhere, and for the next year or so Santos drove a cab for 10 to 11 hours a day. The novice actor's first big break was a part in the 1971 film Panic in Needle Park, which he received at the recommendation of the film's star (and Santos' frequent softball partner) Al Pacino. With the plum part of Sergeant Cruz in the four-part TV drama The Blue Knight (1973), Santos inaugurated a fruitful, still-thriving career in "cop" roles, the best and longest-lasting of which was detective Dennis Becker on the James Garner series The Rockford Files (1974-80). Joe Santos' other series-TV credits include the top-billed part of deadbeat dad Norman Davis in Me and Maxx (1980), Hispanic nightclub comic Paul Rodriguez' disapproving father in AKA Pablo (1984), and Lieutenant Frank Harper in the 1985-86 episodes of Hardcastle and McCormick. One of his final roles was a recurring gig on The Sopranos. Santos died in 2016, at age 84.

Trivia: Stuart Margolin was a published writer and off-Broadway playwright before he was old enough to vote. The pinch-faced, curly-headed Margolin began showing up in character parts in 1966, in films like Women of a Prehistoric Planet and TV series like Occasional Wife. He was a staff writer and member of the acting ensemble on the popular sitcom anthology Love American Style, which ran from 1969 through 1974. In 1971, Margolin co-starred on the western series Nichols, launching his long friendship and professional association with actor James Garner. He went on to win two Emmy awards for his portrayal of mildly larcenous Angel Martin on Garner's long-running (1974-80) series The Rockford Files; played Philo Sandine on the 1981 retro Garner TV vehicle Bret Maverick; and guest-starred on the first episode of Garner's short-lived "dramedy" Man of the People (1991). Stuart Margolin turned to directing in the 1980s, beginning with (inevitably) a brace of James Garner TV movies, The Long Summer of George Adams (1982) and The Glitter Dome (1984)); he has since helmed two theatrical features, Paramedics and Donna d'Onore (both 1990).

Trivia: Born in New York City while his father Noah Beery Sr. was appearing on-stage, Noah Beery Jr. was given his lifelong nickname, "Pidge," by Josie Cohan, sister of George M. Cohan "I was born in the business," Pidge Beery observed some 63 years later. "I couldn't have gotten out of it if I wanted to." In 1920, the younger Beery made his first screen appearance in Douglas Fairbanks' The Mark of Zorro (1920), which co-starred dad Noah as Sergeant Garcia. Thanks to a zoning mistake, Pidge attended the Hollywood School for Girls (his fellow "girls" included Doug Fairbanks Jr. and Jesse Lasky Jr.), then relocated with his family to a ranch in the San Fernando Valley, miles from Tinseltown. While some kids might have chafed at such isolation, Pidge loved the wide open spaces, and upon attaining manhood emulated his father by living as far away from Hollywood as possible. After attending military school, Pidge pursued film acting in earnest, appearing mostly in serials and Westerns, sometimes as the hero, but usually as the hero's bucolic sidekick. His more notable screen credits of the 1930s and '40s include Of Mice and Men (1939), Only Angels Have Wings (again 1939, this time as the obligatory doomed-from-the-start airplane pilot), Sergeant York (1941), We've Never Been Licked (1943), and Red River (1948). He also starred in a group of rustic 45-minute comedies produced by Hal Roach in the early '40s, and was featured in several popular B-Western series; one of these starred Buck Jones, whose daughter Maxine became Pidge's first wife. Perhaps out of a sense of self-preservation, Beery appeared with his camera-hogging uncle Wallace Beery only once, in 1940's 20 Mule Team. Children of the 1950s will remember Pidge as Joey the Clown on the weekly TV series Circus Boy (1956), while the more TV-addicted may recall Beery's obscure syndicated travelogue series, co-starring himself and his sons. The 1960s found Pidge featured in such A-list films as Inherit the Wind (1960) and as a regular on the series Riverboat and Hondo. He kicked off the 1970s in the role of Michael J. Pollard's dad (there was a resemblance) in Little Fauss and Big Halsey. Though Beery was first choice for the part of James Garner's father on the TV detective series The Rockford Files, Pidge was committed to the 1973 James Franciscus starrer Doc Elliot, so the Rockford producers went with actor Robert Donley in the pilot episode. By the time The Rockford Files was picked up on a weekly basis, Doc Elliot had tanked, thus Donley was dropped in favor of Beery, who stayed with the role until the series' cancellation in 1978. Pidge's weekly-TV manifest in the 1980s included Quest (1981) and The Yellow Rose (1983). After a brief illness, Noah Beery Jr. died at his Tehachapi, CA, ranch at the age of 81.

Trivia: Often introduced as "one of America's most familiar faces," it's likely that you've caught a glimpse of Ron Masak either in one of his over 300 appearances in various television shows, on that commercial that lingers in the back of your memory somewhere (he was once blessed with the moniker "king of commercials" and was the voice of the Vlassic Pickle Stork for 15 years), or maybe in one of his 15 feature film appearances. Whatever you might recognize him from, if you don't remember his name, he's the guy that you know you've seen somewhere before, but just might not be able to place where. A native of Chicago, IL (he was once offered a contract with the Chicago White Sox by Hall-of-Famer Rogers Hornsby), Masak was classically trained as an actor at the Windy City's own CCC. A tireless performer, Masak found an initial platform for his talents in the Army, where he toured the world entertaining in an all-Army show in which he served as writer, performer, and director. Masak became well-known not only for his acting abilities, but for the fact that he was a dedicated performer who never missed a show. Proving himself adept at roles ranging from Shakespeare to his almost decade-long stint as the sheriff on Murder She Wrote, Masak thrived in theater and in commercial work around Chicago in the late '50s and early '60s.After a few minor roles in such television series as Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Monkees, and The Flying Nun (not to mention what many consider to be one of the earliest Elvis impersonations on the Spade Cooley Show in 1958), Masak was spotted by producer Harry Ackerman early in his career and went to California to audition for a lead in a pilot. Though that particular prospect fell through, Masak was introduced to John Sturges, a meeting which resulted in his feature debut in the cold-war thriller Ice Station Zebra (1968). Masak's work as an emcee is another testament to his universal appeal and versatile likeability; he has served as host for some of the biggest names in show business, including such talents as Kenny Rogers and Billy Crystal. Masak also starred in four of the most successful sales motivational videos of all time, including Second Effort with Vince Lombardi and Ya Gotta Believe with Tommy Lasorda (which Masak also wrote and directed). The first recipient of MDA's Humanitarian of the Year Award, Masak's work as field announcer for the Special Olympics and his eight-year stint as host of The Jerry Lewis Telethon represents only a fraction of his remarkable work as a compassionate philanthropist, and though Masak's film work may not be as prolific or as frequent as his extensive television work, his roles in such films as Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) are always memorable and constantly ring true with an appeal that often leaves a lasting impression, even though his screen time may be brief and his characters secondary.