Trivia: He debuted onscreen in The Blackbord Jungle (1955) as a sadistic high school student, and after several years he moved up to starring roles. He often played vicious bad guys. He starred in the '60s TV series Combat. In the mid '60s he directed several off-Broadway plays and a couple of short films, then directed, co-produced, and co-wrote the film Deathwatch (1966), adapted from a Jean Genet play; after directing another feature he returned to acting, having gone eight years between screen roles. In 1982 he was killed by the blades of a helicopter while filming an action sequence in the film Twilight Zone: The Movie. He was the father of actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Trivia: Jack Hogan is a character actor and leading man best known for his work in television -- most notably as Private Kirby on the long-running 1960s series Combat! -- and in action films and dramas. Born Richard Roland Benson, Jr. in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1929, he briefly studied architecture at the University of North Carolina before entering the army in 1948, which took him to stations in the Far East. After leaving the service in 1952, he decided to try his hand at acting, and received training at the Pasadena Playhouse in California and the American Theatre Wing in New York. His screen career began in 1956 with the western in Man From Del Rio, starring Anthony Quinn and Katy Jurado. Two years later, he played "Guy Darrow" (sic), the film-a-clef stand-in for the notorious Depression-era bank robber Clyde Barrow in William Witney's The Bonnie Parker Story (1958), starring Dorothy Provine. And that same year, he co-starred with Michael Landon in Ted Post's The Story of Tom Dooley. Hogan appeared in episodes of Have Gun, Will Travel and Bonanza over the next few years, interspersed with occasional film work, until the series Combat! came along in 1962. Hired by director Robert Altman, who shepherded the series through its early stages, Hogan portrayed Private William Kirby in the middle of a strong cast headed by Vic Morrow and Rick Jason, and also including notable character actors Dick Peabody, Pierre Jalbert, and Conlan Carter. He still managed to stand out -- his Private William Kirby (nicknamed "Wild Man" back home) was a sometime screw-up, a skirt-chaser, and complainer, but also a top man with a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) and exactly the kind of soldier any sergeant would want in a tight spot. Hogan was perfect in the role, completely convincing in the action scenes, yet also the valid butt of jokes from his comrades (when one too-young recruit is being shipped home at the end of one episode and promises to be back in two years, he adds that "you guys will probably have this wrapped up by then," to which Vic Morrow's Sgt. Saunders, looking at Hogan after the boy leaves, says, "With you on our side, Kirby, it might be ten.")Following the series' cancellation, Hogan continued to work in television, on programs such as Adam-12, and also had a short-lived series called Sierra. He retired from acting in the 1980s and moved to Hawaii, where he founded a construction business, also working as casting director on Magnum, P.I. and appearing on Jake And The Fat Man. And thanks to the release of Combat! on DVD, and the series' being rerun on ME-TV, he is finding a whole new generation of fans for his work on the series in the twenty-first century.

Trivia: Primarily a television actor, six-foot, six-inch tall Dick Peabody will be best remembered for his portrayal of Littlejohn, an enormous and innocent farmhand, on the TV series Combat that aired in the 1960s. Peabody's contributions to film were not as great, with only a handful of appearances. In late 1999, Peabody died from prostate cancer, at the age of 74.

Trivia: Whitmore attended Yale, where he joined the Yale Drama School Players and co-founded the Yale radio station. After serving in World War II with the Marines, he did some work in stock and then debuted on Broadway in 1947's Command Decision. He entered films in 1949, going on to play key supporting roles; occasionally, he also played leads. For his work in Battleground (1949), his second film, he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. He starred in the early '60s TV series "The Law and Mr. Jones." He won much acclaim for his work in the one-man stage show Give 'Em Hell, Harry!, in which he played Harry Truman; he reprised the role in the 1975 screen version, for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. After 1980 his screen appearances were infrequent. He is the father of actor James Whitmore Jr.