Trivia: A trained dramatic actor, Shelley Berman rose to fame in the 1950s by becoming the first "sit-down" comedian. Berman's calculatedly self-pitying nightclub monologues concerned his tiltings with the minor frustrations of everyday life. His specialty was the "telephone" monologue; seated on a stool and holding an imaginary receiver, Berman invariably cast himself as the victim of Ma Bell bureaucracy and thick-headed unseen "second parties." He tended to wear his neuroses on his sleeve, and was well-known for his unpredictable temperament; in one notorious TV-special appearance of the 1960s, Berman was interrupted in mid-monologue by a ringing offstage pay phone, whereupon he stomped backstage and tore the offending phone off the wall. A busy TV guest-star, Berman showed up frequently on the Paar/Sullivan/Allen variety show circuit of the 1950s and 1960s, and played seriocomic roles on such TV series as Peter Gunn, The Twilight Zone and The Girl From UNCLE. He also played a recurring role on the satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1977), and was co-producer of the 1970 summer replacement series Comedy Tonight. Berman's film credits include The Best Man (1964), Divorce American Style (1967) and Son of the Blob (1970). Dropping out of public view due to profound personal problems (not least of which was the death of his son), Shelley Berman staged a comeback in the 1980s with appearances in such films as Teen Witch (1989) and Elliot Faumann MD (1990).

Trivia: Red-headed, freckle-faced Martin Milner was only 15 when he made his screen debut in Life With Father (1947), and would continue to play wide-eyed high schoolers and college kids well into the next decade. His early film assignments included the teenaged Marine recruit in Lewis Milestone's The Halls of Montezuma (1951) and the obnoxious suitor of Jeanne Crain in Belles on Their Toes (1952). His first regular TV series was The Stu Erwin Show (1950-1955), in which he played the boyfriend (and later husband) of Stu's daughter Joyce. More mature roles came his way in Marjorie Morningstar (1957) as Natalie Wood's playwright sweetheart and in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) as the jazz musician targeted for persecution by Winchell-esque columnist Burt Lancaster. Beginning in 1960, he enjoyed a four-year run as Corvette-driving Tod Stiles on TV's Route 66 (a statue of Milner and his co-star George Maharis currently stands at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY). A longtime friend and associate of producer/director/actor Jack Webb, Milner was cast as veteran L.A.P.D. patrolman Pete Malloy on the Webb-produced TV weekly Adam-12, which ran from 1968 to 1975. His later TV work included a short-lived 1970s series based on Johan Wyss' Swiss Family Robinson. Later employed as a California radio personality, Martin Milner continued to make occasional TV guest appearances; one of these was in the 1989 TV movie Nashville Beat, in which he was reunited with his Adam-12 co-star Kent McCord. He made an appearance on the short-lived series The New Adam-12 and had recurring roles on shows like Life Goes On and Murder, She Wrote. Milner died in 2015, at age 83.

Trivia: Leo Gordon cut one of the toughest, meanest, and most memorable figures on the screen of any character actor of his generation -- and he came by some of that tough-guy image naturally, having done time in prison for armed robbery. At 6 feet 2 inches tall, and with muscles to match, Gordon was an implicitly imposing screen presence, and most often played villains, although when he did play someone on the side of the angels he was equally memorable. Early in his adult life, Gordon did, indeed, serve a term at San Quentin for armed robbery; but after his release he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and was a working actor by the early 1950's. His first credited screen appearance (as Leo V. Gordon) was on television, in the Hallmark Hall of Fame production of "The Blue And White Lamp", with Frank Albertson and Earl Rowe, in 1952. His early feature film appearances included roles in China Venture (1953) and Gun Fury (1953), the latter marking the start of his long association with westerns, which was solidified with his villainous portrayal in the John Wayne vehicle Hondo (1953). It was in Don Siegel's Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), which was shot at San Quentin, that a lot of mainstream filmgoers discovered precisely how fearsome Gordon could be, in the role of "Crazy Mike Carnie." One of the most intimidating members of a cast that was overflowing with tough guys (and which used real cons as extras), Gordon's career was made after that. Movie work just exploded for the actor, and he was in dozens of pictures a year over the next few years, as well as working in a lot of better television shows, and he also earned a regular spot in the series Circus Boy, as Hank Miller. More typical, however, was his work in the second episode of the western series Bonanza, "Death on Sun Mountain", in which he played a murderous profiteer in Virginia City's boomtown days. Once in a while, directors triped to tap other sides of his screen persona, as in the western Black Patch (1957). And at the start of the next decade, Gordon got one of his rare (and best) non-villain parts in a movie when Roger Corman cast him in The Intruder (1962), in the role of Sam Griffin, an onlooker who takes it upon himself to break up a race riot in a small southern town torn by court-ordered school integration. But a year later, he was back in his usual villain mold -- and as good as ever at it -- in McLintock!; in one of the most famous scenes of his career, he played the angry homesteader whose attempt to lynch a Native American leads to a head-to-head battle with John Wayne, bringing about an extended fight featuring the whole cast in a huge mud-pit. Gordon was still very busy as an actor and sometime writer well into the 1980's and early 1990's. He played General Omar Bradley in the mini-series War And Remembrance, and made his final screen appearance as Wyatt Earp in the made-for-television vehicle The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Hollywood Follies. He passed away in 2000 of natural causes.

Trivia: Supporting actor Kent McCord is best known for co-starring in the long-running series Adam-12 (1968-1975). McCord made his film debut in the made-for-television movie The Outsider (1967). Following the demise of Adam-12, McCord continued appearing in TV films and in low-budget features such as Unsub (1985) and Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993).

Trivia: Oklahoma-born William Benedict is fondly remembered by fans for his shock of unkempt blond hair; ironically, he lost his first job at a bank because he refused to use a comb. Stagestruck at an early age, the skinny, ever-boyish Benedict took dancing lessons while in high school and appeared in amateur theatricals. After phoning a 20th Century-Fox talent scout, the 17-year-old Benedict hitchhiked to Hollywood and won a film contract (if for no other reason than nerve and persistence). He appeared in the first of his many office-boy roles in his debut film, $10 Raise (1935), and spent the next four decades popping up in bits as bellboys, caddies, hillbillies, delivery men and Western Union messengers. He portrayed so many of the latter, in fact, that Western Union paid tribute to Benedict by giving him his own official uniform -- an honor bestowed on only one other actor, Benedict's lifelong friend Frank Coghlan Jr. (the two actors costarred in the 1941 serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel). In 1939, Benedict played a bicycle messenger in the Little Tough Guys film Call a Messenger; four years later he appeared with another branch of the Little Tough Guys clan, the East Side Kids, in Ghosts on the Loose. He remained with the Kids as "Skinny," then stayed on when the East Siders transformed into the Bowery Boys in 1946. As "Whitey," Benedict was the oldest member of the team, a fact occasionally alluded to in the dialogue -- though Leo Gorcey, two months younger than Benedict, was firmly in charge of the bunch. Benedict left the Bowery Boys in 1951, gradually easing out of acting; for several years, he worked as an assistant designer of miniature sets for movie special-effects sequences. He returned to performing in the 1960s, still playing the newsboy and delivery man roles he'd done as a youth. Film and TV fans of the 1970s might recall Billy Benedict as a world-weary croupier in the early scenes of The Sting (1973), and in the regular role of Toby the Informant on the 1975 TV series The Blue Knight.