Trivia: Attended an audition for a stage play as a form of punishment and was cast on the spot.Competed in slot car racing in the 1960s.A very active musician and songwriter in the 1980s.Had a left of center radio show in KNFT in Silver City, New Mexico, in the early 2000s.Famously portrayed Newt Winger in The Learning Tree (1969).

Trivia: Before becoming an actress, Estelle Evans, the sister of distinguished African American actress Esther Rolle, taught in New York City schools for 14 years. While studying acting, the Hunter College graduate, shared courses with such distinguished actors as Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. Evans played supporting roles in films such as The Quiet One and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). In 1969 Evans had a lead role in Learning Tree.

Trivia: Brusque character actor Dana Elcar was usually assigned roles calling for blunt imperiousness. He became especially handy in films and TV shows of the 1970s, portraying curt, dour, meticulously groomed authority figures at odds with dishevelled "hippie" and "gonzo" types. Elcar's first film after many years' stage work was 1968's Pendulum; other film credits include Soldier Blue (1969), W.C.Fields and Me (1976), and The Nude Bomb (1980). In 1985, Dana Elcar was cast as Peter Thornton, boss of troubleshooting Richard Dean Anderson, on the TV series MacGiver; Elcar continued playing the role into the 1990s, at which time the actor's real-life blindness required him to incorporate dark glasses and a cane into his characterization.

Trivia: African-American actor Joel Fluellen was a respected stage performer in both all-black and integrated productions throughout the '40s. He was tentative about entering films due to the limited range of roles available for actors of his race. Certainly Fluellen had nothing to be ashamed of in such assignments as the title character's brother in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), but such parts were the exception rather than the rule. For the most part Fluellen found himself cast as noble natives in jungle-oriented films and TV programs, with the occasional worthwhile roles in films like Friendly Persuasion (1956). Not one to hide his opinions, especially in the '40s when non-white performers were expected to keep quiet and accept whatever was given them, Fluellen lobbied loud and long for better parts and working conditions for his fellow African-American performers, and was gratified to see the picture improving in the early '70s. Still, his own roles ranged from adequate to tiny, though he invariably made an indelible impression in such black-oriented films as A Raisin in the Sun (1962), The Learning Tree (1969) and The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings (1975). After a long illness, Joel Fluellen died at age 81, of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Trivia: Big, gravel-voiced black character actor, onscreen from the '60s; he is a former prizefighter.

Trivia: American actor Malcolm Atterbury may have been allowed more versatility on stage, but so far as TV was concerned he was the quintessential grouchy grandfather and/or frontier snake-oil peddler. Atterbury was in fact cast in the latter capacity twice by that haven of middle-aged character players The Twilight Zone. He was the purveyor of an elixir which induced invulnerability in 1959's "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" and a 19th century huckster who nearly sets a town on fire in "No Time Like the Past" (1963). Atterbury enjoyed steadier work as the supposedly dying owner of a pickle factory in the 1973 sitcom Thicker Than Water, and as Ronny Cox's grandfather on the 1974 Waltons clone Apple's Way. Malcolm Atterbury's best-known film role was one for which he received no screen credit: he was the friendly stranger who pointed out the crop-duster to Cary Grant in North By Northwest (1959), observing ominously that the plane was "dustin' where they're aren't any crops."

Trivia: American actress Peggy Rea began gaining notice in the 1960s as a member of Red Skelton's TV stock company. In the 1970s, she was seen as Olivia Walton's cousin Rose Burton in The Waltons and on an irregular basis as man-chasing Lulu Hogg in The Dukes of Hazzard. Later seen in maternal roles, Peggy Rea was featured on Step By Step (1991) as Ivy Williams, the mother of Suzanne Sommers' character, and as Brett Butler's mom Jean Kelly in Grace Under Fire (1993- ).

Trivia: Kevin Hagen is a veteran character actor long associated with intense dramatic roles. He has portrayed everything from hitmen and rapists to prosecutors and police officers, but is perhaps best known to television audiences for his portrayal of the avuncular Dr. Baker on the long-running series Little House on the Prairie. Hagen was born and raised in and around Chicago, but moved to Portland, OR, during his teens. Following a two-year hitch in the United States Navy, he attended college on the G.I. Bill, majoring in international relations, and later worked for the U.S. State Department in Germany. Bored with that job, he considered a career in law but dropped out after one year. While trying to figure out what he wanted to do for a career, he auditioned for a production of the play Blind Alley and won a small role, despite the fact that he had never acted before. Within a year, Hagen had moved up to playing the lead in a production of James Thurber's play The Male Animal, and spent the next few years scraping out a living in small theatrical productions around Los Angeles in between studying with Agnes Moorehead, among other notables. His breakthrough came with his portrayal of stern patriarch Ephraim Cabot in a production of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms -- that led to his getting an agent and, in turn, led to his television debut in an episode of Dragnet. He appeared in various dramatic anthology shows and played important guest-star parts on programs such as Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Cheyenne, M-Squad, and The Untouchables -- in one episode of the latter, "Stranglehold," Hagen brought a startling degree of humanity and depth to the part of a professional killer. Hagen made his feature-film debut in 1958 in the Disney-produced The Light in the Forest, and that same year, he got his first regular role in a series when he was cast in the part of John Colton, the city administrator of post-Civil War New Orleans, in Yancy Derringer. The show only ran for one season, but Hagen had more work than ever following the conclusion of filming, on such series as Bonanza, Perry Mason, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Felony Squad, and Mission: Impossible. He also did some film work, most notably in Andrew V. McLaglen's Civil War drama Shenandoah (1965), in which Hagen played the scavenging deserter who murders James Stewart's son (Patrick Wayne) and rapes and murders Stewart's daughter-in-law (Katharine Ross). During this period, he also began a string of appearances in television series produced by Irwin Allen, guest starring in episodes of Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Time Tunnel. Those roles led to Hagen's being cast as Inspector Kobick, the security officer pursuing the diminutive earthlings, in Allen's Land of the Giants. He brought a great deal of humanity and complexity to his portrayal of the character in the course of the series' two-season run. During the 1970s, Hagen made frequent guest appearances on series such as M*A*S*H, Quincy, and Knot's Landing. In 1974, Hagen was cast in the role for which he has become best known, as Dr. Baker in Little House on the Prairie. He portrayed the part for ten seasons and developed a serious fandom among the series' legions of viewers. Hagen left Hollywood for Oregon in the early '80s, and has continued his work in regional theater productions of such plays as West Side Story, Follies, and Oklahoma! He also performs his own one-man show, a mixture of songs, monologues, and prairie wit and wisdom drawn from his Little House persona.

Trivia: Actor Dub Taylor, the personification of grizzled old western characters, has been entertaining viewers for over 60 years. Prior to becoming a movie actor, Taylor played the harmonica and xylophone in vaudeville. He used his ability to make his film debut as the zany Ed Carmichael in Capra's You Can't Take it With You (1938). He next appeared in a small role in the musical Carefree(1938) and then began a long stint as a comical B-western sidekick for some of Hollywood's most enduring cowboy heroes. During the '50s he became a part of The Roy Rogers Show on television. About that time, he also began to branch out and appear in different film genres ranging from comedies, No time for Sergeants (1958) to crime dramas, Crime Wave (1954). He has also played on other TV series such as The Andy Griffith Show and Please Don't Eat the Daisies. One of his most memorable feature film roles was as the man who brought down the outlaws in Bonnie and Clyde. From the late sixties through the nineties Taylor returned to westerns.

Trivia: Baby-faced second lead Don Dubbins began his film career at Columbia, playing young military types in From Here to Eternity (1953) and The Caine Mutiny (1954). Film star James Cagney took a liking to Dubbins, and saw to it that the young performer was prominently cast in Cagney's These Wilder Years (1956) and Tribute to a Bad Man (1956). Maturing into a dependable character actor, Dubbins later appeared in such films as The Prize (1963), The Illustrated Man (1969) and Death Wish II (1976). After nearly a decade in retirement, Don Dubbins died at the age of 63.

Trivia: Actor Jon Lormer appeared in several films from the late '50s through the mid-'80s. He was also a teacher and director at the American Theater Wing in New York. Lormer guest starred in many television series and made-for-TV movies.

Trivia: American actress Hope Summers was noted in Hollywood for her ability to emit blood-curdling screams. The character actress worked frequently on stage, radio, television, and in feature films.