Trivia: American actor James Arness had an unremarkable Minneapolis childhood, but his wartime experiences shattered that normality - literally. During the battle of Anzio, Arness' right leg was peppered with machine gun bullets, and when the bones were set they didn't mend properly, leaving him with a slight but permanent limp. The trauma of the experience mellowed into aimlessness after the war. Arness became a "beach bum," lived out of his car, and worked intermittently as a salesman and carpenter. Acting was treated equally lackadaisically, but by 1947 Arness had managed to break into Hollywood on the basis of his rugged good looks and his 6'6" frame. Few of his screen roles were memorable, though one has become an object of cult worship: Arness was cast as the menacingly glowing space alien, described by one character as "an intellectual carrot," in The Thing (1951). For a time it looked as though Arness would continue to flounder in supporting roles, while his younger brother, actor Peter Graves, seemed destined for stardom. John Wayne took a liking to Arness when the latter was cast in Wayne's Big Jim McLain (1953). Wayne took it upon himself to line up work for Arness, becoming one of the withdrawn young actor's few friends. In 1955, Wayne was offered the role of Matt Dillon in the TV version of the popular radio series Gunsmoke. Wayne turned it down but recommended that Arness be cast and even went so far as to introduce him to the nation's viewers in a specially filmed prologue to the first Gunsmoke episode. Truth be told, Arness wasn't any keener than Wayne to be tied down to a weekly series, and as each season ended he'd make noises indicating he planned to leave. This game went on for each of the 20 seasons that Gunsmoke was on the air, the annual result being a bigger salary for Arness, more creative control over the program (it was being produced by his own company within a few years) and a sizeable chunk of the profits and residuals. When Gunsmoke finally left the air in 1975, Arness was the only one of the original four principals (including Amanda Blake, Milburn Stone and Dennis Weaver) still appearing on the series. Arness made plans to take it easy after his two-decade Gunsmoke hitch, but was lured back to the tube for a one-shot TV movie, The Macahans (1976). This evolved into the six-hour miniseries How the West Was Won (1977) which in turn led to a single-season weekly series in 1978. All these incarnations starred Arness, back in the saddle as Zeb Macahan. The actor tried to alter his sagebrush image in a 1981 modern-day cop series, McClain's Law -- which being set in the southwest permitted Arness to ride a horse or two. It appeared, however that James Arness would always be Matt Dillon in the hearts and minds of fans, thus Arness obliged his still-faithful public with three Gunsmoke TV movies, the last one (Gunsmoke: The Last Apache) released in 1992. In between these assignments, James Arness starred in a 1988 TV-movie remake of the 1948 western film classic Red River, in which he filled the role previously played by his friend and mentor John Wayne.

Trivia: The eldest of six sisters, Michael Learned spent her first decade on her family's farm in Connecticut. When she was 11, Learned moved to Austria, where her father worked for the U.S. State Department. While attending boarding school in England, she discovered the theater, and decided to make it her life's work. At 16, she married actor Peter Donat, a union that lasted until 1972. Dividing her time between stage acting and raising her sons, she appeared in Canadian and American Shakespeare Festival, and for several years was associated with San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre. While appearing in a production of Noel Coward's Private Lives, Learned was selected by John Rich to play Olivia Walton on his upcoming TV series The Waltons (she replaced Patricia Neal, who starred as Olivia in the 1971 pilot film The Homecoming). She remained with The Waltons until 1980, winning three Emmies in the process. In 1981, she was starred as Mary Benjamin in her own series, Nurse (1981-82), which earned her a fourth Emmy. Hoping to distance herself from the Olivia Walton image, she went to play Dr. Marie Teller in the 1988 weekly Hothouse and model agency head Trish Carlin in Living Dolls (1989). She also appeared in such theatrical features as Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993) and such made-for-TV specials as All My Sons (1986). Eventually, however, Michael Learned returned to the Waltons fold in a 1995 TV-movie reunion.

Trivia: Richard Kiley trained for a theatrical career at the Barnum Dramatic School. Just before his World War II service, Kiley played small roles in several Chicago-based radio programs. He relocated to New York in 1947, making his Broadway debut in a 1953 revival of Shaw's Misalliance (which earned him a Theatre World Award). He spent the next two decades alternating in "straight" plays and musicals: his credits in the latter category include Kismet, Redhead, No Strings and, of course, his Tony-winning dual performance as Cervantes and Quixote in Man of La Mancha. In films from 1950, Kiley was often cast as a menace, never more so than in 1953's Pickup on South Street, in which he commits the heinously antisocial act of murdering Thelma Ritter. He was more sympathetic as the alcoholic teacher in The Blackboard Jungle (1955), whose faith in his abilities is irreparably damaged when his juvenile delinquent students wantonly destroy his valuable record collection. On television, Kiley starred in the original 1956 staging of Rod Serlings Patterns and was Emmy-nominated for his work in The Thorn Birds (1983), Do You Remember Love? (1988), Separate But Equal (1990),and his own starring series A Year in the Life (1989). He finally won the Emmy for a 1994 guest appearance in Picket Fences. Ironically, the most successful film endeavor with which Richard Kiley was associated was one in which only his voice is heard; he's the fellow who explains the cloning process in the opening animated sequences of Jurassic Park (1993).

Trivia: American actor Hugh O'Brian accrued his interest in acting while dancing with movie starlets at the Hollywood Canteen during his wartime Marine days. O'Brian attended the University of Cincinnati briefly, and later supported himself selling menswear door-to-door. He made his first film, Never Fear, in 1950, working but sporadically during the next five years; what few acting parts he received were on the basis of his broad shoulders and six-foot height. In one film, Fireman Save My Child (1954), O'Brian was cast because he and costar Buddy Hackett physically matched the previously filmed long shots of Fireman's original stars, Abbott and Costello. Answering a cattle-call tryout for the new ABC TV western Wyatt Earp in 1955, O'Brian was almost instantly chosen for the leading role by author Stuart Lake, who'd known the real Wyatt and had been his biographer for many years (reportedly Earp's widow also okayed O'Brien after a single glance). O'Brian became a major TV star thanks to Wyatt Earp, which ran for 249 episodes until 1961. The series was not only tough on the actor but on his fans; reportedly there was a sharp increase in gun accidents during Wyatt Earp's run, due to young would-be Earps who were trying to emulate Wyatt's fast draw (this despite the fact that the TV Earp, like the real one, used his firearms only when absolutely necessary). Like most western TV stars, O'Brian swore he was through with shoot-em-ups when Earp ceased production, and throughout the '60s he worked in almost every type of film and theatrical genre but westerns. He showed considerable skill in the realm of musical comedy, and became a top draw in the summer-stock and dinner theatre circuit. In 1972, O'Brian starred in the computer-happy secret-agent TV series Search, which lasted only a single season. As he became the focus of hero worship from grown-up Baby Boomers, O'Brian relaxed his resistance toward Wyatt Earp and began showing up on live and televised western retrospectives. The actor reprised the Earp role in two 1989 episodes of the latter-day TV western Paradise, opposite Gene Barry in his old TV role of Bat Masterson. He was Earp again in the 1991 TV movie The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw, in which he managed to shine in the company of several other cowboy-show veterans (including Barry, again) and was permitted to walk into the sunset as an offscreen chorus warbled the Wyatt Earp theme music! Hugh O'Brian's most recent turn at Ol' Wyatt was in a hastily assembled CBS movie mostly comprised of clips from the old Earp series, and released to capitalize on Kevin Costner's big-budget Wyatt Earp film of 1994. O'Brian died in 2016, at age 91.

Trivia: Seinfeld cultists will have little or no difficulty remembering character actor Ned Bellamy; he played Eddie, the knife-obsessed, fatigue-wearing employee of the J. Peterman company, whom Elaine tries to dismiss with a promotion, in the 1996 episode "The Fatigues." That turn, with its aggressive, menacing air, was fairly typical of the roles in which Bellamy often found himself (despite the fact that he could bring those qualities to bear on comic or earnest material). A native of Dayton, OH, he grew up in Joplin, MO, and entered show business in the very late '70s, initially on television programs including The Waltons, M*A*S*H, and The Dukes of Hazzard. As time rolled on, however, Bellamy moved more squarely into filmed work, specializing in action, horror, or thriller fare. Big-screen projects that featured the actor included House IV: Home Deadly Home (1991), Universal Soldier (1992), and Carnosaur (1993).After the Seinfeld appearance, Bellamy unveiled more of a comic emphasis in his role choices, evidenced by his work in such projects as Being John Malkovich (1999), The Whole Ten Yards (2004), and Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (2006). In 2008, Bellamy turned up as Waylon Forge in the romantically charged vampire opus Twilight (2008), which marked the actor's second collaboration with director Catherine Hardwicke after an appearance in her Lords of Dogtown (2005).

Trivia: Following her training in regional theatre and radio, red-headed actress Amanda Blake was signed by MGM in 1949, where she was briefly groomed for stardom. Among her MGM assignments was 1950's Stars in My Crown, in which she was cast for the first time opposite James Arness. Film fame eluded Amanda, especially after her sizeable role in the 1954 version of A Star is Born was almost completely excised from the release print. By 1955, she had to make do with appearances in such epics as the Bowery Boys' High Society. Amanda's fortunes took a turn for the better later in 1955, when she won the role of Miss Kitty, the euphemistically yclept "hostess" of the Long Branch Saloon on the TV western Gunsmoke, which starred James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon. She remained with Gunsmoke until its next-to-last season in 1974. After Gunsmoke, Amanda went into semi-retirement save for a handful of film projects like the made-for-TV Betrayal (1974), the theatrical releases The Boost (1988) and B.O.R.N (1989), and the 1987 reunion project Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge. Amanda Blake died in 1989 at the age of sixty.