Trivia: Chuck Connors attended Seton Hall University before embarking on a career in professional sports. He first played basketball with the Boston Celtics, then baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Chicago Cubs. Hardly a spectacular player -- while with the Cubbies, he hit .233 in 70 games -- Connors was eventually shipped off to Chicago's Pacific Coast League farm team, the L.A. Angels. Here his reputation rested more on his cut-up antics than his ball-playing prowess. While going through his usual routine of performing cartwheels while rounding the bases, Connors was spotted by a Hollywood director, who arranged for Connors to play a one-line bit as a highway patrolman in the 1952 Tracy-Hepburn vehicle Pat and Mike. Finding acting an agreeable and comparatively less strenuous way to make a living, Connors gave up baseball for films and television. One of his first roles of consequence was as a comic hillbilly on the memorable Superman TV episode "Flight to the North." In films, Connors played a variety of heavies, including raspy-voiced gangster Johnny O in Designing Woman (1957) and swaggering bully Buck Hannassy in The Big Country (1958). He switched to the Good Guys in 1958, when he was cast as frontiersman-family man Lucas McCain on the popular TV Western series The Rifleman. During the series' five-year run, he managed to make several worthwhile starring appearances in films: he was seen in the title role of Geronimo (1962), which also featured his second wife, Kamala Devi, and originated the role of Porter Ricks in the 1963 film version of Flipper. After Rifleman folded, Connors co-starred with Ben Gazzara in the one-season dramatic series Arrest and Trial (1963), a 90-minute precursor to Law and Order. He enjoyed a longer run as Jason McCord, an ex-Army officer falsely accused of cowardice on the weekly Branded (1965-1966). His next TV project, Cowboy in Africa, never got past 13 episodes. In 1972, Connors acted as host/narrator of Thrill Seekers, a 52-week syndicated TV documentary. Then followed a great many TV guest-star roles and B-pictures of the Tourist Trap (1980) variety. He was never more delightfully over the top than as the curiously accented 2,000-year-old lycanthrope Janos Skorzeny in the Fox Network's Werewolf (1987). Shortly before his death from lung cancer at age 71, Chuck Connors revived his Rifleman character Lucas McCain for the star-studded made-for-TV Western The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1993).

Trivia: A former Mousketeer, Johnny Crawford is best remembered for playing young Mark McCain on The Rifleman (1958-1963). His career slowed after he reached adulthood when he was relegated to supporting roles.

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 actress Hope Summers was noted in Hollywood for her ability to emit blood-curdling screams. The character actress worked frequently on stage, radio, television, and in feature films.

Trivia: American actor Michael Forest starred in the title role in Roger Corman's sword-and-sandal opus Atlas (1961), after which he made the Hollywood adventure movie rounds of the mid to late '60s. He was among the handsome Hollywood hunks prevalent in such films as The Glory Guys (1966), The Sweet Ride (1967) and 100 Rifles (1969). Two decades later, Forest was still essaying beefcake supporting roles, notably in 1988's Deep Space. Soap-opera addicts are most familiar with Michael Forest for his interpretation of Nick Andropoulos on TV's As the World Turns. Devotees of Star Trek will remember Forest as the messianic Apollo in the 1967 episode "Who Mourns for Adonis?." And sitcom fans will recall Forest as Laura Petrie's former beau Joe Coogan, who shows up unexpectedly in clerical collar as Father Coogan on a 1963 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. In 2013, Forest turned in a very touching and powerful performance reprising his 1960s-era Star Trek role of the Greek god Apollo, in the fan-produced "Star Trek Continues" episode "Pilgrim Of Eternity," in which he was introduced working opposite his real-life wife Diana Hale (playing Athena).

Trivia: Though best known for his Native American characterizations, Michael Ansara was actually of Lebanese descent. Ansara, born in Syria and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, entered Los Angeles City College in 1941, planning to become a doctor. His shyness in class prompted his professor to suggest that Ansara take a dramatics course to bolster his self-confidence. The medical profession's loss turned out to be the acting community's gain: after training at Pasadena Playhouse, Ansara blossomed as a classical actor with such groups as the Hollywood Players' Ring. The role that brought Ansara to the attention of Hollywood's higher-ups was his brief, uncredited appearance as the tormented Judas in The Robe (1953). He went on to be cast as Cochise in the 1956 TV series version of the 1950 20th Century-Fox feature Broken Arrow; while the role brought him fame and fortune, Ansara noted that "the acting range was rather limited. Cochise could do one of two things--stand with his arms folded, looking noble; or stand with his arms at his sides, looking noble." He was allowed a more flexible acting range, as well as a wider vocabulary, in his next Indian assignment, that of Harvard-educated federal marshal Sam Buckhart in the 1959 western series Law of the Plainsman. In later years, Ansara was active in the lucrative world of TV cartoon voiceover work. He was married for several years to actress Barbara Eden.