Trivia: Lori Martin was a child actress who went from commercials to a career in film and television drama. Born Dawn Catherine Menzer in 1947, she was one of four children of Russell and Dora May Menzer (her father was a set designer at Warner Bros.) and wanted to be an actress from early childhood. She made her professional debut in a commercial under her own name in 1954 and was busy for the remainder of the decade, later appearing on such television series as Medic, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Wagon Train, Leave It to Beaver, and Trackdown. She also played small roles in two movies, The FBI Story and Machine Gun Kelly (all billed as Dawn Menzer), before getting a series of her own, as Velvet Brown in the NBC's version of National Velvet, for which producer Robert Maxwell gave her the name Lori Martin. The series ended up running for two seasons (until 1962). Martin made the transition to teenage ingénue roles, including a good performance in J. Lee Thompson's original version of Cape Fear (1962) as Gregory Peck's daughter. That should have been enough to get her more movie work, but somehow the films and roles were there. She did lots of one-shots on TV in series like Sam Benedict, The Donna Reed Show, Mickey, Slattery's People, and Breaking Point, and two separate stints four years apart on My Three Sons, before eventually fading out of the business in 1970. Martin's performance in a 1967 episode of Please Don't Eat the Daisies as a predatory drama student with romantic designs on Mark Miller's married college professor was a change of pace, and she closed out her movie career in 1968 with David Commons' The Angry Breed. Her work as the virginal daughter of decadent agent William Windom and his dissolute wife (Jan Sterling) was notable for its provocative nature -- the scene of the bikini-clad Martin being rescued from a gang of would-be rapists on the beach by laconic veteran Murray MacLeod was a highlight of Commons' deliriously bizarre account of new and old Hollywood and a long, long way from her pony-tailed horseback riding days on National Velvet.

Trivia: A sadly neglected supporting actress, Ann Doran played everything from Charley Chase's foil in Columbia two-reelers of the late '30s to James Dean's mother in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and also guest starred in such television shows as Superman, Petticoat Junction, Bewitched, and The A Team. A former child model and the daughter of silent screen actress Rose Allen (1885-1977), Doran made her screen bow in Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922) but then spent the next 12 years or so getting herself an education. She returned to films in 1934 and joined the Columbia short subject department two years later. While with Columbia, Doran worked on all of Frank Capra's films save Lost Horizon (1937) and she later toiled for both Paramount and Warner Bros., often receiving fine reviews but always missing out on the one role that may have made her a star. Appearing in more than 500 films and television shows (her own count), Doran worked well into the 1980s, often unbilled but always a noticeable presence.

Trivia: American general purpose actor Arthur Space was active in films from 1940. Tall, tweedy, and usually sporting a mustache, Space played just about every kind of supporting role, from Western banker to big-city detective to jewel thief. One of his largest film roles was as the delightfully eccentric inventor Alva P. Hartley in the 1944 Laurel and Hardy vehicle The Big Noise. As busy on television as in films, Arthur Space was seen on a weekly basis as Herbert Brown, the father of horse-loving teenager Velvet Brown, in the TV series National Velvet (1960-1961).