Trivia: A football star at Eastern Kentucky State College, Lee Majors came to Los Angeles armed with a physical education degree and possessed with a vague desire to break into films. He worked as a park recreation director for the City of Los Angeles before entering show business in 1963. Majors was promoted as "the New James Dean," though he personally aspired to become a new Steve McQueen or Paul Newman (he also retained his permit to work as a recreation director, just in case the world wasn't holding its breath for a new Dean, McQueen or Newman). Majors achieved stardom on his own merits in a variety of television series, the most recent of which was 1992's Raven. His best-known TV roles included Heath Barkley on The Big Valley (1965-69), bionic Steve Austin on The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-78) and stunt man Colt Seavers on The Fall Guy (1981-86). In addition, he has headlined a number of made-for-TV movies, essaying the old Gary Cooper part in the 1991 sequel to High Noon and portraying U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in a 1976 biopic. Majors would continue to act in the decades to come, memorably appearing in Big Fat Liar and on The Game. For several years, Lee Majors was married to actress Farrah Fawcett.

Trivia: Lead actress, onscreen from Zapped! (1982).

Trivia: Blonde, perky Markie Post is a television actress best known for playing curvaceous young prosecutor Christine Sullivan on the long-running sitcom Night Court between 1985 and 1992 and for starring in the controversial and short-lived romantic sitcom Hearts Afire (1992). Born Marjorie Post, she is the daughter of a nuclear physicist and a poet. She had a comfortable and quiet upbringing in California. Post studied acting while enrolled in Lewis and Clark College. She graduated in 1975 and was briefly married before she found work backstage writing questions for game shows and choosing prizes for The Price Is Right, Card Sharks, and Family Feud. She was about to be promoted to executive producer when Post decided it was time to work on her acting career. She made her television debut as a guest star on other series and on the very short-lived series Semi-Tough (1980). She next had a role in another short series, The Gangster Chronicles (1981), and then a longer lasting regular part on The Fall Guy from 1982 to 1985. After leaving the show, Post went on to appear in three television movies before landing her role on Night Court. Following the cancellation of Hearts Afire, Post, who was friends with the show's producers, Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who in turn were friends of President Bill Clinton, was informally appointed a White House advisor. There she hosted an Inaugural special program for children and advised the President on ways to improve his image. Post also continued appearing in television movies such as Survival on the Mountain (1997) and making guest appearances on other shows.

Trivia: Burly character actor Ramon Bieri made his first professional stage appearance in 1954. A film performer from 1970, Bieri has often shown up as rednecks and rabblerousers. One of his best-remembered screen assignments was also one of his smallest: as the strong-arm police captain in Warren Beatty's Reds, Bieri responded to Beatty's explanatory "I write" by growling "No...you wrong!" A more affable Bieri was seen as Babe Ruth in the 1977 TV movie A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story. Ramon Bieri's many TV-series credits include the starring role of Detroit blue-collar worker Joe Wabash in Joe's World (1979-1980).

Trivia: Following his graduation from the University of Iowa and World War II service, Jock Mahoney came to Hollywood as a stuntman. Quickly establishing a reputation as one of the best and most courageous purveyors of his trade, Mahoney graduated to speaking roles in 1946. Billed as Jacques O'Mahoney, he played villains and secondary roles in Republic and Columbia westerns, showed up as a parodied "strong and silent" leading man in a handful of Three Stooges 2-reelers, and, while doubling for Errol Flynn, performed the legendary staircase leap in 1949's The Adventures of Don Juan. In 1951, Gene Autry hired Mahoney (who was now billing himself as Jack Mahoney) to star in the popular TV western series The Range Rider. This led to leading roles in such features as Overland Pacific (1954), Showdown at Abilene (1956) and I've Lived Before (1956). In 1958, Mahoney starred in another weekly TV western, Yancey Derringer. Two years later he played the villain in a Tarzan picture starring Gordon Scott, succeeding Scott as the "lord of the jungle" in Tarzan Goes to India (1962) -- during the filming of which he fell deathly ill, a fact that is painfully obvious in the completed picture. Suffering a severe stroke in 1973, Mahoney made a near-complete recovery in the last five years of his life, performing his final stunt (tumbling from a wheelchair) in Burt Reynolds' The End. Reynolds exhibited his admiration for Mahoney in his 1980 vehicle Hooper, in which the stuntman character played by Brian Keith was named "Jocko." Mahoney's last film work was as stunt coordinator for John Derek's otherwise wretched 1981 remake of Tarzan of the Apes. Married for many years to actress Mary Field, whom he'd met while filming Range Rider, Jock Mahoney was the stepfather of Oscar-winning actress Sally Field.

Trivia: Canadian lead actress onscreen from the '70s, beginning with Flash Gordon.

Trivia: What do actors Gig Young, Anne Shirley, and L.Q. Jones have in common? All of them lifted their show-biz names from characters they'd portrayed on screen. In 1955, University of Texas alumnus Justice McQueen made his film debut in Battle Cry, playing a laconic lieutenant named L.Q. Jones. McQueen liked his character so much that he remained L.Q. Jones offscreen ever after (though he never made it legal, still listing himself as Justice Ellis McQueen in the 1995 edition of Who's Who). A natural for westerns both vocally and physically, Jones played supporting roles in several big-screen oaters, and was seen on TV as Smitty on Cheyenne (1955-58) and as Belden on The Virginian (1964-67). Jones gained a measure of prominence in the films of Sam Peckinpah, notably Ride the High Country (1961) and The Wild Bunch (1969). Turning to the production side of the business in the early 1970s, L. Q. Jones produced and co-starred in the 1971 film Brotherhood of Satan; he also co-produced, directed, adapted and played a cameo (as a porn-movie actor!) in the fascinating 1975 cinemazation of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, a tour de force that won Jones a Hugo Award from America's science fiction writers.

Trivia: Not to be confused with variety-show host Willie Bryant, American general purpose actor William Bryant kept busy in outdoors films. He was featured in such westerns as Ride Beyond Vengeance (1966), Heaven with a Gun (1969) and John Wayne's Chisum (1970). His additional non-western credits include Gable and Lombard (1976), Mountain Family Robinson (1977) (in a leading role) and Corvette Summer (1977). From 1976 through 1978, William Bryant costarred as Lieutenant Shilton on the Robert Wagner/Eddie Albert TV detective series Switch, and also appeared for a time as Lamont Corbin on the daytime serial General Hospital.

Trivia: To help support his large family, American actor Jimmy Lydon was forced along with his eight siblings to seek out work at an early age. The boy began picking up acting jobs, appearing in such plays as Western Waters and The Happiest Days. Lydon's first film was Back Door to Heaven, after which he appeared as the title character of Tom Brown's School Days (1940). The essential seriousness with which he tackled his work may have stemmed from Lydon's dislike of the demeaning audition process and the callous manner in which child actors were treated by many adult directors. When Jackie Cooper balked at continuing the role of Henry Aldrich in a series of Paramount B-pictures, Lydon was assigned to the part, ultimately appearing in nine Henry Aldrich films. The adenoidal, trouble-prone Henry was a hard image for Lydon to shake, but he did his best with polished performances in such films as Strange Illusion (1945) (a bizarre "B"-film based on Hamlet), and Life with Father (1947), in which Lydon was paired with Elizabeth Taylor. Finding film work sparse in the '50s, Lydon began doing commercial voiceovers and acting in television: he played a newlywed in the 1952 daytime serial The First Hundred Years, a benign space alien on the syndicated 1953 sci-fier Rocky Jones: Space Ranger, an actor's agent on So This is Hollywood (1955), and Anne Jeffreys' secretary in the 1958 sitcom Love That Jill. From 1956 onward, Lydon, wearying of the headaches and heartaches of an acting career (though he'd still accept a part if he liked it), began training for production work behind the cameras. He worked on the producer's staff of such series as Wagon Train and 77 Sunset Strip, and on occasion (notably the 1965 TV version of Mister Roberts) directed as well as produced. Lydon also functioned as producer on several films, such as the Sean Connery vehicle Chubasco (1968). Frequently, Lydon used his production clout to secure work for his ailing father-in-law, veteran movie villain Bernard Nedell. But while he was willing to help an older relative, James Lydon, still smarting from losing out on a normal childhood, actively discouraged his children from entering show business -- at least until they were grown up.

Trivia: Husky, bushy-mustached, frequently unkempt Canadian actor Jack Kruschen appeared steadily on radio from 1938 onward. He began playing small film roles in 1949, often cast as minor villains and braying bullies. He became a cult favorite after playing one of the three earliest victims (the Hispanic one) of the Martian death ray in George Pal's War of the Worlds (1953). His larger film roles included MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer in the Carol Lynley version of Harlow (1965), and the remonstrative physician neighbor of Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960); the latter assignment copped a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nomination for Kruschen. A tireless TV performer, Kruschen has guested in a variety of roles on most of the top video offerings, and was a regular in the 1977 sitcom Busting Loose, playing the father of Adam Arkin. Relatively inactive after 1980, Jack Kruschen made a welcome return in PBS' 1993 adaptation of Arthur Miller's The American Clock.