Trivia: John Agar was one of a promising group of leading men to emerge in the years after World War II. He never became the kind of star that he seemed destined to become in mainstream movies, but he did find a niche in genre films a decade later. Agar was the son of a Chicago meatpacker and never aspired to an acting career until fate took a hand in 1945, when he met Shirley Temple, the former child star and one of the most famous young actresses in Hollywood. In a whirlwind romance, the 17-year-old Temple married the 25-year-old Agar. His good looks made him seem a natural candidate for the screen and, in 1946, he was signed to a six-year contract by producer David O. Selznick. He never actually appeared in any of Selznick's movies, but his services were loaned out at a considerable profit to the producer, beginning in 1948 with his screen debut (opposite Temple) in John Ford's classic cavalry drama Fort Apache, starring John Wayne and Henry Fonda. His work in that movie led to a still larger role in Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, also starring Wayne. Those films were to mark the peak of Agar's mainstream film career, though John Wayne, who took a liking to the younger actor, saw to it that he had a major role in The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), which was one of the most popular war movies of its era. In 1949, however, Temple divorced Agar and his career slowed considerably; apart from the film he did with Wayne, the most notable aspect of his career that year was his appearance in the anti-Communist potboiler I Married a Communist (aka The Woman on Pier 13). During the early '50s, he appeared in a series of low-budget programmers such as The Magic Carpet, one of Lucille Ball's last feature films prior to the actress becoming a television star, and played leads in second features, including the offbeat comedy The Rocket Man. Agar seemed destined to follow in the same downward career path already blazed by such failed mid-'40s leading men as Sonny Tufts, when a film came along at Universal-International in 1955 that gave his career a second wind. The studio was preparing a sequel to its massively popular Creature From the Black Lagoon, directed by Jack Arnold, and needed a new leading man; Agar's performance in an independent film called The Golden Mistress had impressed the studio and he was signed to do the movie. Revenge of the Creature, directed by Arnold, was nearly as successful as its predecessor, and Agar had also come off well, playing a two-fisted scientist. He was cast as the lead in Arnold's next science fiction film, Tarantula, then in a Western, Star in the Dust, and then in The Mole People, another science fiction title. In between, he also slipped in a leading-man performance in Hugo Haas' crime drama Hold Back Tomorrow. He left Universal when the studio refused to give him roles in a wider range of movies, but his career move backfired, limiting him almost entirely to science fiction and Western movies for the next decade. In 1956, the same year that he did The Mole People, Agar made what was arguably the most interesting of all his 1950s films, Flesh and the Spur, directed by Edward L. Cahn for American International. The revenge Western, in which he played a dual role, wasn't seen much beyond the drive-in circuit, however, and was not widely shown on television; it is seldom mentioned in his biographies despite the high quality of the acting and writing. Agar was most visible over the next few years in horror and science fiction films, including Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, Attack of the Puppet People, The Brain From Planet Arous, Invisible Invaders, and Journey to the Seventh Planet. Every so often, he would also work in a mainstream feature such as Joe Butterfly or odd independent features like Lisette, but it was the science fiction films that he was most closely associated with and where he found an audience and a fandom. Coupled with his earlier movies for Universal, those films turned Agar into one of the most visible and popular leading men in science fiction cinema and a serious screen hero to millions of baby-boomer preteens and teenagers. The fact that his performances weren't bad -- and as in The Brain From Planet Arous, were so good they were scary -- also helped. It required a special level of talent to make these movies work and Agar was perfect in them, very convincing whether playing a man possessed by aliens invaders or a scientist trying to save the Earth. In 1962, he made Hand of Death, a film seemingly inspired in part by Robert Clarke's The Hideous Sun Demon, about a scientist transformed into a deadly monster, that has become well known in the field because of its sheer obscurity: The movie has dropped out of distribution and nobody seems to know who owns it or even who has materials on Hand of Death. By the time of its release, however, this kind of movie was rapidly losing its theatrical audience, as earlier examples from the genre (including Agar's own Universal titles) began showing up regularly on television. Hollywood stopped making them and roles dried up for the actor. He appeared in a series of movies for producer A.C. Lyles, including the Korean War drama The Young and the Brave and a pair of Westerns, Law of the Lawless and Johnny Reno, both notable for their casts of aging veteran actors, as well as in a few more science fiction films. In Arthur C. Pierce's Women of the Prehistoric Planet, Agar pulled a Dr. McCoy, playing the avuncular chief medical officer in the crew of a spaceship and also had starring roles in a pair of low-budget Larry Buchanan films for American International Pictures, Zontar, the Thing From Venus and Curse of the Swamp Creature. Amid all of these low-budget productions, however, Agar never ceased to try and keep his hand in mainstream entertainment -- there were television appearances that showed what he could do as a serious actor, perhaps most notably the 1959 Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Caretaker's Cat" (where he was billed as "John G. Agar," perhaps an effort to separate that work from his recent films) and tragic title role in the Branded episode "The Sheriff" (1967); and he always seemed to give 100% effort in those less classy oaters, horror outings, and space operas.His career after that moved into the realm of supporting and character parts, including a small but key role in Roger Corman's first big-budget, big-studio film The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. He returned to working with John Wayne in three Westerns, The Undefeated, Chisum, and Big Jake, and turned up every so often in bit parts and supporting roles, sometimes in big-budget, high-profile films such as the 1976 remake of King Kong, but mostly he supported himself by selling insurance. In the 1990s, however, Agar was rediscovered by directors such as John Carpenter, who began using him in their movies and television productions, and he worked onscreen in small roles into the 21st century until his death in 2002.

Trivia: After stage and modelling experience, raven-haired leading lady Paula Raymond entered films as a Columbia stock actress. In 1950, she moved to MGM, where she played prominent roles opposite Cary Grant (Crisis), Van Johnson (Grounds for Marriage) and Dick Powell (The Tall Target). "Shock theatre" fans remember Raymond best as the screaming heroine in Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1952). Working less and less as the 1950s segued into the 1960s, Paula Raymond closed out her career in inexpensive horror films.

Trivia: American actor and drama coach Roy Gordon made his first film appearance in 1938. A bit player for most of his Hollywood career, Gordon was at his best as corporate-executive types. He also played many a college dean, banker and military officer. Late Late Show habitues will remember Roy Gordon for his poignant cameo as doomed passenger Isidore Straus in Titanic (1953).

Trivia: A graduate of the Roger Corman school of fast-n-furious filmmaking, American cinematographer John A. Alonzo has been fortunate enough to be associated with some of the most significant films of the 1970s. He oversaw the photography of such classics as Harold and Maude (1971), Sounder (1972), Lady Sings the Blues (1972), and Norma Rae, and was co-photographer for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978). The ever-inventive Alonzo was the man whose 1974 Chinatown set the industry standard for the use of soft focus and saturated color to convey the "look" of the 1930s. He remained in demand into the 1980s and 1990s, shooting films as varied as the airborne actioner Blue Thunder (1981) and the cartoon/live action hybrid Cool World (1992). Thus far, Alonzo's only foray into film directing has been the engaging rock-n-roll comedy FM (1978).

Trivia: After a stint as a delivery boy, roly-poly Joe Besser worked his way up the show business ladder as a song plugger and magician's assistant. A vaudeville headliner in his mid-twenties, the bilious, balding Besser usually appeared as a member of a team. On his own, he contributed to the general merriment of Olsen and Johnson's Sons O' Fun, playing his patented stage character as a whining, overweight sissy. Besser's trademarked "I'll HAAAARM you" and "Oh, you NAAAASTY, you!" could be heard throughout the 1940s in such radio shows as The Jack Benny Program and such Columbia feature films as Hey, Rookie! A close friend of comedian Lou Costello, Besser was amusingly cast as an effete gunman in Abbott & Costello's Africa Screams (1949) and as the bratty little boy (!) Stinky in TV's The Abbott and Costello Show (1951-1952). He also starred in his own series of Columbia two-reelers, usually playing a misfit G.I., and from 1956 to 1958 he was a member of the Three Stooges. Flourishing into the 1960s and 1970s, Besser was a regular on The Joey Bishop Show (1962-1965), played supporting roles (sometimes surprisingly dramatic in nature) in films and on TV, and provided voice-overs for such cartoon series as Jeannie (1972) and Yogi's Space Race (1977). One of Joe Besser's last public appearances came about when the Three Stooges at long last received their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Trivia: First acting gig was a Kellogg's commercial in 1960. Formed a band called Eddie and the Monsters, who released a single in 1983, recalling his role as Eddie (who looked like a wolf boy) on the 1964-66 sitcom, The Munsters. "Whatever Happened to Eddie?" was followed, in 2007, by another song, "It's Only Halloween." Took part in a motorcycling event in Carthage, NY, in 2010 to benefit the blind. Has frequently appeared at Halloween events in his Eddie Munster costume.

Trivia: A general purpose performer with slightly more distinction to his face and voice than most of his ilk, American actor Norman Burton quietly entered films in the 1960s. Many of his early films were more artistic than profitable, as witness the experimental Wild Seed (1965). Burton was spotted in brief character parts in a few box-office hits, notably Planet of the Apes (1968) (he was the simian Hunt Leader) and The Towering Inferno (1974) (as Will Giddings). In the James Bond actioner Diamonds are Forever (1970), Burton succeeded Jack Lord, Rik Van Nutter et. al. in the role of Bond's American CIA contact Felix Leiter. On TV's New Adventures of Wonder Woman series of the late 1970s, Burton had the recurring role of Joe Atkinson, the boss of anti-subversive operative Diana Prince (aka Wonder Woman). Still answering casting calls into the 1990s, Norman Burton was one of many film veterans appearing in the zany 1994 biopic Ed Wood.

Trivia: Actress Ruth Terry was 17 when she inked her first movie contract at 20th Century Fox. After a few nondescript roles at Fox and Columbia, Terry settled at Republic Studios, where she thrived as an all-purpose leading lady, playing roles both friendly and unsympathetic. Her more famous Republic credits include The Affairs of Jimmy Valentine (1943), My Buddy (1944), Steppin' in Society (1945), and The Cheaters (1945). Ruth Terry retired in the mid-'40s, making a brief comeback in 1962.