Trivia: Fans of the science fiction television series Quantum Leap will know supporting and character actor Dean Stockwell as the scene-stealing, cigar chomping, dry-witted, and cryptic hologram Al. But to view him only in that role is to see one part of a multi-faceted career that began when Stockwell was seven years old.Actually, his ties with show business stretch back to his birth for both of his parents were noted Broadway performers Harry Stockwell and Nina Olivette. His father also provided the singing voice of the prince in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1931). Stockwell was born in North Hollywood and started out on Broadway in The Innocent Voyage (1943) at age seven. Curly haired and beautiful with a natural acting style that never descended into cloying cuteness, he made his screen debut after contracting with MGM at age nine in Anchors Aweigh (1945) and continued on to play sensitive boys in such memorable outings as The Mighty McGurk (1946), The Boy With Green Hair (1948), and The Secret Garden (1949). He would continue appearing in such films through 1951 when he went into the first of several "retirements" from films. When Stockwell resurfaced five years later it was as a brooding and very handsome 20-year-old who specialized in playing introverts and sensitive souls in roles ranging from a wild, young cowboy in Gun for a Coward (1957) to a murderous homosexual in Compulsion (1958) to an aspiring artist who cannot escape the influence of his domineering mother in Sons and Lovers (1960). Stockwell topped off this phase of his career portraying Eugene O'Neill in Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962). Stockwell would spend the next three years as a hippie and when he again renewed his career it was in such very '60s efforts as Psych-Out (1968) and the spooky and weird adaptation of a Lovecraft story, The Dunwich Horror. During this period, Stockwell also started appearing in television movies such as The Failing of Raymond (1971). In the mid-'70s, the former flower child became a real-estate broker and his acting career became sporadic until the mid-'80s when he began playing character roles. It was in this area, especially in regard to comic characters, that Stockwell has had his greatest success. Though he claims it was not intentional, Stockwell has come to be almost typecast as the king of quirk, playing a wide variety of eccentrics and outcasts. One of his most famous '80s roles was that of the effeminate and rutlhess sleaze, Ben, in David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986). Stockwell had previously worked with Lynch in Dune and says that when the director gave him the script for Velvet, his character was not specifically mapped out, leaving Stockwell to portray Ben in any way he felt appropriate. The actor's intuition has proven to be one of his greatest tools and helped create one of modern Hollywood's most creepy-crawly villains. Whenever possible, Stockwell prefers working by instinct and actively avoids over-rehearsing his parts. His career really picked up after he landed the part of Al in Quantum Leap. Since the show's demise, Stockwell has continued to appear on screen, starring on series like Battlestar Galactica.

Trivia: It was his failure as a playwright that led Robert Ryan to a three-decade career as an actor. He was a unique presence on both the stage and screen, and in the Hollywood community, where he was that rarity: a two-fisted liberal. In many ways, at the end of the 1940s, Ryan was the liberals' answer to John Wayne, and he even managed to work alongside the right-wing icon in Flying Leathernecks (1951). The son of a successful building contractor, Ryan was born in Chicago in 1909 and attended Dartmouth College, where one of his fraternity brothers was Nelson Rockefeller. He was a top athlete at the school and held its heavyweight boxing title for four straight years. Ryan graduated in 1932, during the depths of the Great Depression, and intended to write plays. Finding no opportunities available in this field, he became a day laborer; he stoked coal on a ship bound for Africa, worked as a sandhog, and herded horses in Montana, among other jobs. Ryan finally had his chance to write as a member of a theater company in Chicago, but proved unsuccessful and turned to acting. He arrived in Hollywood at the end of the '30s and studied at the Max Reinhardt Workshop, making his professional stage debut in 1940. He appeared in small roles for Paramount Pictures, but Ryan's real film career didn't begin until several years later. He returned east to appear in stock, and landed a part in Clifford Odets' Clash by Night, in which he worked opposite Tallulah Bankhead and got excellent reviews. Ryan came to regard that production and his work with Bankhead as the pivotal point in his career. The reviews of the play brought him to the attention of studio casting offices, and he was signed by RKO. The actor made his debut at the studio in the wartime action thriller Bombardier. It was a good beginning, although his early films were fairly lackluster and his career was interrupted by World War II -- he joined the Marines in 1944 and spent the next three years in uniform. Ryan's screen career took off when he returned to civilian life in 1947. He starred in two of the studio's best releases that year: Jean Renoir's The Woman on the Beach and Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire, the latter an extraordinary film for its time dealing with troubled veterans and virulent anti-Semitism, with Ryan giving an Oscar-nominated performance as an unrepentant murderer of an innocent Jewish man. He continued to do good work in difficult movies, including the Joseph Losey symbolic drama The Boy With Green Hair (1948) and with Robert Wise's The Set-Up (1949). The latter film (which Ryan regarded as his favorite of all of his movies) was practically dumped onto the market by RKO, though the studio soon found itself with an unexpected success when the film received good reviews, it was entered in the Cannes Film Festival, and it won the Best Picture award in the British Academy Award competition. Ryan also distinguished himself that year in Dmytryk's Act of Violence and Max Ophüls' Caught, Nicholas Ray's On Dangerous Ground in 1951, and then repeated his stage success a decade out in Fritz Lang's Clash by Night (1952). Along with Robert Mitchum, Ryan practically kept the studio afloat during those years, providing solid leading performances in dozens of movies. In the late '50s, he moved into work at other studios and proved to be one of the most versatile leading actors in Hollywood, playing heroes and villains with equal conviction and success in such diverse productions as John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Anthony Mann's God's Little Acre (1958), Wise's Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), and Peter Ustinov's Billy Budd (1962). Even in films that were less-than-good overall, he was often their saving grace, nowhere more so than in Ray's King of Kings (1961), in which he portrayed John the Baptist. Even during the late '40s, Ryan was never bashful about his belief in liberal causes, and was a highly vocal supporter of the so-called "Hollywood Ten" at a time when most other movie professionals -- fearful for their livelihoods -- had abandoned them. He was also a founder of SANE, an anti-nuclear proliferation group, and served on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union. During the early '50s, he'd fully expected to be named in investigations and called by the House Select Committee on Un-American Activities or Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, but somehow Ryan was never cited, despite his public positions. In later years, he attributed it to his Irish last name, his Catholic faith, and the fact that he'd been a marine. Considering his career's focus on movies from the outset, Ryan also fared amazingly well as a stage actor. In addition to Clash by Night, he distinguished himself in theatrical productions of Shakespeare's Coriolanus in 1954 at Broadway's Phoenix Theater and a 1960 production of Antony and Cleopatra opposite Katharine Hepburn at the American Shakespeare Festival. (Hepburn later proposed him for the lead in the Irving Berlin musical Mr. President in 1962.) Ryan's other theatrical credits included his portrayal of the title role in the Nottingham (England) Repertory Theater's production of Othello, Walter Burns in a 1969 revival of The Front Page, and James Tyrone in a 1971 revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night. Not all of Ryan's later films were that good. His parts as the American field commander in Battle of the Bulge and Lee Marvin's army antagonist in The Dirty Dozen were written very unevenly, though he was good in them. He was also a strange choice (though very funny) for black comedy in William Castle's The Busy Body, and he wasn't onscreen long enough (though he was excellent in his scenes) in Robert Siodmak's Custer of the West. But for every poor fit like these, there were such movies as John Sturges' Hour of the Gun and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, in which he excelled. His success in Long Day's Journey Into Night was as prelude to his last critical success, as Larry in John Frankenheimer's The Iceman Cometh (1973). Ironically, at the time he was playing a terminally ill character in front of the camera, Ryan knew that he was dying from lung cancer. During this time he also filmed a hard-hitting anti-smoking public service announcement that directly attributed his condition to his long-time heavy use of cigarettes.

Trivia: According to her Rockford, Illinois, high-school yearbook, Barbara Hale hoped to make a career for herself as a commercial artist. Instead, she found herself posing for artists as a professional model. This led to a movie contract at RKO Radio, where she worked her way up from "B"s like The Falcon in Hollywood (1945) to such top-of-the-bill attractions as A Likely Story (1947) and The Boy With Green Hair (1949). She continued to enjoy star billing at Columbia, where among other films she essayed the title role in Lorna Doone (1952). Her popularity dipped a bit in the mid-1950s, but she regained her following in the Emmy-winning role of super-efficient legal secretary Della Street on the Perry Mason TV series. She played Della on a weekly basis from 1957 through 1966, and later appeared in the irregularly scheduled Perry Mason two-hour TV movies of the 1980s and 1990s. The widow of movie leading man Bill Williams, Barbara Hale was the mother of actor/director William Katt. Hale died in 2017, at age 94.

Trivia: Walter Catlett began his acting career in stock companies in his hometown of San Francisco. After attending St. Ignacious College, he reached New York in 1911 in the musical The Prince of Pilsen. Catlett's dithering comic gestures and air of perpetual confusion won him a legion of fans and admirers when he starred in several editions of The Ziegfeld Follies, and in the Ziegfeld-produced musical comedy Sally, in which he appeared for three years. Catlett made a handful of silent film appearances, but didn't catch on until the advent of talking pictures allowed moviegoers to see and hear his full comic repertoire. Usually sporting horn-rimmed spectacles or a slightly askew pince-nez, Catlett played dozens of bumbling petty crooks, pompous politicians and sleep-benumbed justices of the peace. Hired for a few days' work in Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby (1938), Catlett proved so hilarious in his portrayal of an easily befuddled small-town sheriff that his role was expanded, and he was retained off-screen to offer advice about comic timing to the film's star, Katharine Hepburn. In addition to his supporting appearances, Catlett starred in several 2-reel comedies, and was co-starred with his lifelong friend Raymond Walburn in the low-budget "Henry" series at Monogram. Busy until a few short years before his death, Walter Catlett appeared in such 1950s features as Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956), Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Beau James (1957) (as New York governor Al Smith).

Trivia: Raspy-voiced, distinguished-looking actor Samuel S. Hinds was born into a wealthy Brooklyn family. Well-educated at such institutions as Philips Academy and Harvard, Hinds became a New York lawyer. He moved to California in the 1920s, where he developed an interest in theatre and became one of the founders of the Pasadena Playhouse. A full-time actor by the early 1930s, Hinds entered films in 1932. Of his nearly 150 screen appearances, several stand out, notably his portrayal of Bela Lugosi's torture victim in The Raven (1935), the dying John Vincey in She (1935), the crooked political boss in Destry Rides Again (1939) and the doctor father of Lew Ayres in MGM's Dr. Kildare series. He frequently co-starred in the films of James Stewart, playing Stewart's eccentric future father-in-law in You Can't Take It With You (1938) and the actor's banker dad in the holiday perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946). One of Samuel S. Hinds' final film roles was an uncredited supporting part in the 1948 James Stewart vehicle Call Northside 777.

Trivia: Taking up dramatics while attending the University of Pittsburgh, Regis Toomey extended this interest into a profitable career as a stock and Broadway actor. He specialized in singing roles until falling victim to acute laryngitis while touring England in George M. Cohan's Little Nellie Kelly. In 1929, Toomey made his talking-picture bow in Alibi, where his long, drawn-out climactic death scene attracted both praise and damnation; he'd later claim that, thanks to the maudlin nature of this scene, producers were careful to kill him off in the first or second reel in his subsequent films. Only moderately successful as a leading man, Toomey was far busier once he removed his toupee and became a character actor. A lifelong pal of actor Dick Powell, Regis Toomey was cast in prominent recurring roles in such Powell-created TV series of the 1950s and 1960s as Richard Diamond, Dante's Inferno, and Burke's Law.

Trivia: A handsome, dark-haired silent-screen leading man with a widow's peak, Charles Meredith appeared opposite some of the era's great leading ladies, including Marguerite Clark, Blanche Sweet, Mary Miles Minter, Katherine MacDonald, and Florence Vidor. Between 1924 and 1947, Meredith concentrated on the legitimate stage, then returned to film as a distinguished character actor, playing the judge in Joan Crawford's Daisy Kenyon (1947), the High Priest in DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949), and an admiral in Submarine Command (1952). Continuing well into the television era, the veteran actor had continuing roles in two short-lived series: Rocky Jones, Space Ranger (1954) and Erle Stanley Garner's Court of Last Resort.

Trivia: A Broadway actor who also found marked success in celluloid with roles in such film noir classics as The Set-Up and The Narrow Margin, David Clarke embarked on an enduring screen career following his debut in the 1941 boxing drama Knockout. The Chicago native found a powerful ally in the business when he made fast friends with star Will Geer while pounding the boards in his hometown early on, and after being abandoned in Seattle following a failed touring play, the talented duo set their sights on Broadway. Both actors were hired to appear in the 1936 Broadway play 200 Were Chosen, and in the years that followed, both Geer and Clarke went on to achieve notable success on both stage and screen. Clarke also found frequent work on television on such popular series as Kojak and Wonder Woman as well as a recurring role in the small-screen drama Ryan's Hope. Clarke and Geer remained lifelong friends, appearing together in both the 1949 film Intruder in the Dust and the enduring television drama The Waltons -- in which Clarke made several guest appearances. David Clarke married actress Nora Dunfee in 1946; the couple would frequently appear together on-stage and remained wed until Dunfee's death in 1994. On April 18, 2004, David Clarke died of natural causes in Arlington, VA. He was 95.

Trivia: Child actor Teddy Infuhr made his first screen appearance as one of Charles Laughton's kids in 1942's The Tuttles of Tahiti. Long associated with Universal Pictures, Infuhr garnered a great deal of critical attention for his brief appearance as a mute, semi-autistic pygmy in Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman (1944). Later on, he showed up as one of the anonymous children of Ma and Pa Kettle (Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride) in Universal's The Egg and I; when the Kettles were spun off into their own long-running movie series, Infuhr remained with the backwoods brood, usually cast as either George or Benjamin Kettle. One of his many free-lance assignments was Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), in which the poor boy suffered one of the most horrible deaths ever inflicted upon a movie juvenile. Teddy Infuhr's film career came to a quiet close in the early 1950s. He died in June 2007 at age 70.

Trivia: The younger brother of former child star Darryl Hickman, Dwayne Hickman was himself a professional actor from the age of 10. Dwayne's early film roles were essentially bits; one of his first worthwhile assignments was a 1950 episode of TV's The Lone Ranger, in which he played a young orphan who grew up to be a character played by his older brother. After guesting on such series as The Stu Erwin Show, Hickman was cast as Bob Cummings' girl-happy nephew Chuck on the popular sitcom Love That Bob (1954-58). Claiming to have no natural talent, Hickman has insisted that he learned everything he knows about comic acting from Cummings, whom he admired to the point of idolatry. In 1958, he landed his first major screen role, playing a small-town Brando wannabe in Rally Round the Flag Boys. Max Shulman, author of the novel upon which the film was based, was impressed by Hickman, and recommended that the actor be starred in another Shulman adaptation, the weekly TV series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. During the Dobie run, Hickman briefly enjoyed Top-40 radio airplay with his recording of the folk-song parody "I'm a Lover, Not a Fighter." When Dobie Gillis folded in 1963, Hickman returned to feature films, offering comedy support to Jane Fonda in Cat Ballou (1965) and Frankie Avalon in The Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1966). Temporarily retiring from acting in 1970, Hickman worked as a publicist, and later as entertainment director of Las Vegas' Landmark Hotel. In 1977, he followed brother Darryl's lead by joining the production staff at CBS television. Hickman served as CBS' executive in charge of daytime programming, and as supervisor of the network's comedy series. Every so often, he'd accept an acting role, and on two occasions revived his Dobie Gillis characterization for a brace of "retro" TV movies. In 1994, Dwayne Hickman and his wife Joan collaborated on his autobiography, Forever Dobie.

Trivia: Indiana native Charles Arnt attended Princeton University, where he was president of the Triangle Club and where he earned a geological engineering degree. Short, balding and with an air of perpetual suspicion concerning his fellow man, Arnt seemed far older than his 30 years when he was featured in the original Broadway production of Knickerbocker Holiday. In the movies, Arnt was often cast as snoopy clerks, inquisitive next-door neighbors or curious bystanders. Charles Arnt was seen in such films as The Falcon's Brother (1942), The Great Gildersleeve (1943) and That Wonderful Urge (1948); he also played one top-billed lead, as an obsessive art dealer in PRC's Dangerous Intruder (1946).

Trivia: Tousle-haired juvenile actor Russ Tamblyn began taking up dancing and acrobatics at the age of six. Needing very little prodding from his parents, the eager Tamblyn embarked on his professional career in the late '40s, performing in radio and Los Angeles musical revues. His first "straight" acting assignment was opposite Lloyd Bridges in the 1947 play Stone Jungle. He entered films in 1948, then was given an "introducing" screen credit for his first starring role in The Kid From Cleveland (1949). Signed by MGM, the young actor changed his billing from Rusty to Russ when cast as an army trainee in 1953's Take the High Ground. Beginning with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Tamblyn became a popular musical star, playing the title role in Tom Thumb (1958) and co-starring as gang leader Riff in the Oscar-winning West Side Story (1961). He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as the teenaged swain of Allison McKenzie (Diane Varsi) in 1958's Peyton Place. By the late '60s, Tamblyn's career had waned, and he was accepting roles in such cheapjack exploitation flicks as Satan's Sadists (1970) and Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971). Russ Tamblyn stuck it out long enough to make a healthy comeback in the late '80s, notably in the role of psychiatrist Lawrence Jacoby on the cult-TV favorite Twin Peaks (1990).

Trivia: American actor Pat O'Brien could never remember just why he wanted to go on stage; it just sort of happened naturally, just as his college football activities at Marquette University and his enlistment in the Navy for World War I. In the company of college chum Spencer Tracy, O'Brien moved to New York in the early twenties, where, while studying at Sargent's Academy, they were cast as robots in the theatrical production RUR. O'Brien spent several years with numerous stock companies, forming lasting friendships with such future Hollywood notables as Frank McHugh, James Gleason and Percy Kilbride. He also met his wife, actress Eloise Taylor, with whom he remained for the next five decades. In 1930, O'Brien was brought to Hollywood to play ace reporter Hildy Johnson in The Front Page (1931); this came about because the director mistakenly believed O'Brien had played the role on Broadway, when in fact he'd played managing editor Walter Burns in a Chicago stock-company version. This misunderstanding was forgotten when O'Brien scored a success in Front Page, which led to a long term contract with Warner Bros. Casual film fans who believe that O'Brien played nothing but priests and football coaches might be surprised at the range of roles during his first five years at Warners. Still, the performances for which Pat O'Brien is best remembered are Father Jerry in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), in which he begs condemned killer Jimmy Cagney to "turn yellow" during the Last Walk so Cagney won't be a hero to the neighborhood kids, and, of course, the title role in Knute Rockne, All American (1940), wherein he exhorted his flagging team to "win just one for the Gipper." Too old to serve in World War II, O'Brien tirelessly did his bit with several hazardous USO tours in the thick of the action. Following the war, O'Brien continued to play leads in a good series of RKO films, but he'd put on weight and lost a few hairs in the years since his Warner Bros. heyday, thus was more effectively cast in character roles like Dean Stockwell's vaudeville dad in The Boy With Green Hair (1949). Then, inexplicably, the roles dried up. O'Brien always believed that he was the victim of a blacklist -- not for being a Communist, but for being such a right winger that he was frozen out by Hollywood's liberal contingent. The diminishing box office for his films and an overall slump in the movie industry may also have played a part in O'Brien's fall from grace, but the fact was he found the going rough in the '50s. Fortunately, he had an aggresive agent and several loyal friends -- notably Spencer Tracy, who refused to star in MGM's The People Against O'Hara unless the studio set aside a big part for O'Brien. Television and summer stock kept O'Brien busy throughout most of the 1950s, with a brief comeback to stardom via a good part in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959) and a weekly TV sitcom, "Harrigan and Son" (1960). O'Brien also worked up a well-received nightclub act, in which he described himself as "an Irish Myron Cohen" (Cohen was a popular Jewish dialect comedian of the era). Unlike his close friend James Cagney, O'Brien never stopped working, touring with his wife Eloise in straw hat productions of Never too Late and On Golden Pond. His performances proved that this was no pathetic oldster clinging desperately to the past, but a vibrant, up-to-date talent who could still deliver the goods. Nor was Pat O'Brien falsely modest. In answer to an interviewer's query if he felt that he'd been underrated by Hollywood, the seventy-plus O'Brien mustered all his Irish pugnacity and snapped "I'm damn good and I know it." As did everyone who saw Pat O'Brien's feisty final film performances in The End (1978) and Ragtime (1981).

Trivia: Ann Carter was a child actress and young ingénue of the 1940s, who first came to the attention of producers and the movie press because of her startling resemblance to Veronica Lake. After making her debut in an uncredited role in The Last of the Duanes (1941), she played a small role in Commandos Strike at Dawn the same year, and then portrayed the daughter of Lake's character in I Married a Witch (1942). Her biggest and best role, however, was in the Val Lewton-produced Curse of the Cat People (1944), in which she played the sweet, impressionable daughter of Kent Smith and Jane Randolph (whose characters had previously appeared in Lewton's Cat People), who is beset by images of ghosts and the machinations of a disturbed adult (Elizabeth Russell) in a huge, dark, old neighboring house. Carter played the young Texas Guinan (portrayed by Betty Hutton as an adult) in Incendiary Blonde, but all of her scenes were deleted. She was in a few more notable films, including The Two Mrs. Carrolls, for which she won an award for her portrayal of the preteen daughter, and The Boy With Green Hair, but somehow didn't manage to regularly get roles that were as good as her talent. She portrayed a large supporting role in Blondie Hits the Jackpot (1949), a very late entry in Columbia Pictures' "Blondie" series, at age 13. Carter contracted polio in 1948 and spent years recovering; she wasn't seen again until her appearance in Fred Zinnemann's superb Member of the Wedding (1952), which was her last acting role. She died in 2014 at age 77.

Trivia: Stage actor Peter Brocco made his first film appearance in 1932's The Devil and Deep. He then left films to tour in theatrical productions in Italy, Spain and Switzerland. Returning to Hollywood in 1947, Brocco could be seen in dozens of minor and supporting roles, usually playing petty crooks, shifty foreign agents, pathetic winos and suspicious store clerks. His larger screen roles included Ramon in Spartacus (1960), The General in The Balcony (1963), Dr. Wu in Our Man Flint (1963), and the leading character in the Cincinnati-filmed black comedy Homebodies (1974). The addition of a fuzzy, careless goatee in his later years enabled Brocco to portray generic oldsters in such films as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1977), The One and Only(1977), Throw Momma From the Train (1989) and War of the Roses (1983). In 1983, Peter Brocco was one of many veterans of the Twilight Zone TV series of the 1950s and 1960s to be affectionately cast in a cameo role in Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).

Trivia: Born in Sweden, actress Anna Q. Nilsson was lured to the U.S. as a teenager by dreams of luxury and creature comforts. Her first job was as a nursemaid, but Anna learned English quickly and was able to advance herself professionally. Her striking Nordic beauty made her a much sought-after commercial model; one of the photographers with whom Nillson worked suggested that the girl was pretty enough for motion pictures, and recommended her for a one-reel epic titled Molly Pitcher (1913). She worked her way up to stardom, and her career might have continued unabated had not Nillson been seriously injured in 1925 when, while riding a horse, she was thrown against a stone wall. Nillson was an invalid for one whole year, working arduously with therapists and specialists in Sweden and Vienna until she was finally able to walk without aid. One of Nillson's comeback films was The Babe Comes Home (1927), in which she worked like a Spartan to give her own performance while trying to make baseball star Babe Ruth look good. When talking pictures came in, Nillson, whose career had been faltering since her accident, gave up films to concentrate on charity work. Occasionally she'd accept featured or bit roles, though few are worth mentioning except for her appearance as one of the silent-star "waxworks" - including Buster Keaton and H.B. Warner - in the 1950 film drama Sunset Boulevard. Anna Q. Nilsson retired in 1963 to Sun City, California.

Trivia: Ex-prizefighter Dale Robertson was brought to films by virtue of his vocal and physical resemblance to Clark Gable. After a year of bit parts at Warner Bros., Robertson graduated to leading-man gigs at 20th Century Fox. In 1957, Robertson was cast on the popular TV Western Tales of Wells Fargo which ran until 1962. Since that time, Robertson has starred or co-starred in a number of television weeklies, nearly always Western (both period and contemporary) in nature: The Iron Horse (1966-1968), Dynasty (1980-1982), and J.J. Starbuck (1989). In addition, Dale Robertson has headlined two TV-movie pilots based on the exploits of famed G-Man Melvin Purvis. Robertson made his final screen appearance in Martha Coolidge's 1991 period piece Rambling Rose, passing away from lung cancer over twenty years later at the age of 89.