Trivia: Scion of a wealthy New York City family, Rick Jason managed to get himself expelled from eight different prep schools before finally graduating with acceptable grades from the Rhodes School. Following World War II service, Jason attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on the GI Bill. He was discovered for the theatre by actor/director Hume Cronyn, who cast Jason as an Ecuadorian Indian in the brief Broadway production Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. After making his movie bow in 1952's Sombrero, Jason could be seen in lightweight second-lead roles in such films as The Lieutenant Wore Skirts (1955) and The Wayward Bus (1957). In 1960, he was cast as a tuxedoed secret agent on the syndicated TV series The Case of the Dangerous Robin. Two years later, he signed up for a five-season hitch as Lt. Gil Hanley on the popular TV war drama Combat. For the first time in his life, Jason found himself subjected to the fan-magazine publicity glare, raising eyebrows by marrying three women during a period of 19 months! Rick Jason's post-Combat career hasn't been quite so remarkable, with appearances in such second-echelon features as Color Me Dead (1969) and The Witch Who Came From the Sea (1976).

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: Short and intense Sal Mineo was a sad-eyed juvenile and adult actor with black curls. At age eight his misbehavior caused him to be kicked out of a parochial school; he went on to attend dancing classes and two years later was cast in Broadway's The Rose Tattoo, moving from there to a prominent adolescent role in The King and I with Yul Brynner. Mineo debuted onscreen in 1955 and for the next decade he was a busy screen actor, first in juvenile roles and then in youthful leads; his characters were often troubled. For his work at age 16 in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), his third feature, he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination; he was nominated in the same category for Exodus (1960). His film work began to dry up after the mid-'60s and Mineo turned to TV and the stage. He directed the play Fortune and Men's Eyes on the West Coast and on Broadway. He was stabbed to death on the street in 1976.