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: American actress Joanna Barnes went from Southern-belle complacency to a contract with Warner Bros. studios. Joanna was generally cast as steely-eyed, truculent blondes in such films as Home Before Dark (1958) and (freelancing for director Stanley Kubrick) Spartacus (1960). She also held the dubious distinction of being the latest in a long line of "Janes" in the 1959 cheapie Tarzan of the Apes. Barnes worked a great deal on television in the 1950s and 1960s: she was detective Dennis Morgan's girl Friday on 1959's 21 Beacon Street; the ex-wife of pennyante attorney Peter Falk in the 1965 weekly drama The Trials of O'Brien; and the hostess of the 5-minute ABC gossipfest Dateline Hollywood. In 1973, Joanna gave up acting to pursue a career as a novelist, and to that end took a room in a Los Angeles office building leased exclusively to professional writers. While Joanna Barnes might not be remembered for her writings, she made an indelible impression as Vassar-educated socialite Gloria Upson, who spoke as though she had novacaine in her upper lip (the playwrights' description of the character) in the 1958 film comedy Auntie Mame.

Trivia: Durable leading lady Nita Talbot spent the first decade or so of her career playing "slick chicks" and sharp-witted career girls. In films from 1956, she was afforded a wealth of varied screen roles, from the love-starved switchboard operator in A Very Special Favor (1966) to the brassy Madame Esther in Buck and the Preacher (1972). A TV-series perennial, Talbot was seen as Mabel Spooner opposite Larry Blyden's Joe Spooner in Joe and Mabel (1956), unregenerate con artist Blondie Collins on The Thin Man (1957), resourceful girl Friday Dora on The Jim Backus Show (1960), snooty socialite Judy Evans in Here We Go Again (1973) and ultracyncial Rose in Starting from Scratch. Nita Talbot was also a familiar face on the daytime-drama scene, with long-running roles in Search for Tomorrow and General Hospital.

Trivia: American character actor Harry Cheshire was usually billed as "Pappy," and, like S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall, he certainly lived up to his nickname, both visually and temperamentally. After a long career on stage and in radio, Cheshire came to films in 1940, appearing in many of Republic's "hillbilly" musicals and westerns. In larger-budgeted films, he was usually seen in minor roles as businessmen, ministers, justice of the peaces and the like. He played Dr. Campbell in the Yuletide classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), the stage manager of the ill-fated Iroquois theater in The Seven Little Foys (1955) and the Elvis-hating mayor in Loving You (1957). He also showed up in a few of the Ma and Pa Kettle entries, and was afforded a rare opportunity at all-out villainy in Dangerous Mission (1954). TV western fans will remember Harry Cheshire as Judge Ben Wiley on the Gene Autry-produced weekly Buffalo Bill Jr. (1954).

Trivia: In recalling his courtroom scene in To Kill a Mockingbird, Gregory Peck recalled the vital contribution of African American actor Bill Walker, who was cast as the Reverend Sikes. "All the black people in the balcony stood," Peck noted. "My two kids didn't. When Bill said to them 'Stand up, children, your father is passing,' he wrapped up the Academy Award for me." The son of a freed slave, Walker began his stage career at a time when black actors were largely confined to shuffling, eye-rolling "Yowzah boss" bit parts. While the harsh economic realities of show business dictated that Walker would occasionally have to take less than prestigious roles as butlers, cooks, valets, and African tribal chieftains, he lobbied long and hard to assure that other actors of his race would be permitted to portray characters with more than a modicum of dignity. He also was a tireless worker in the field of Civil Rights, frequently laying both his career and his life on the line. Walker's Broadway credits included Harlem, The Solid South and Golden Dawn; his film credits were legion. Bill Walker was married to actress Peggy Cartwright, who as a child was one of the stars of the Our Gang silent comedies.

Trivia: A football star in his high school and college days, Donald Barry forsook an advertising career in favor of a stage acting job with a stock company. This barnstorming work led to movie bit parts, the first of which was in RKO's Night Waitress (1936). Barry's short stature, athletic build and pugnacious facial features made him a natural for bad guy parts in Westerns, but he was lucky enough to star in the 1940 Republic serial The Adventures of Red Ryder; this and subsequent appearance as "Lone Ranger" clone Red Ryder earned the actor the permanent sobriquet Donald "Red" Barry. Republic promoted the actor to bigger-budget features in the 1940s, casting him in the sort of roles James Cagney might have played had the studio been able to afford Cagney. Barry produced as well as starred in a number of Westerns, but this venture ultimately failed, and the actor, whose private life was tempestuous in the best of times, was consigned to supporting roles before the 1950s were over. By the late 1960s, Barry was compelled to publicly entreat his fans to contribute one dollar apiece for a new series of Westerns. Saving the actor from further self-humiliation were such Barry aficionados as actor Burt Reynolds and director Don Siegel, who saw to it that Don was cast in prominent supporting roles during the 1970s, notably a telling role in Hustle (1976). In 1980, Don "Red" Barry killed himself -- a sad end to an erratic life and career.