Trivia: American actor James Arness had an unremarkable Minneapolis childhood, but his wartime experiences shattered that normality - literally. During the battle of Anzio, Arness' right leg was peppered with machine gun bullets, and when the bones were set they didn't mend properly, leaving him with a slight but permanent limp. The trauma of the experience mellowed into aimlessness after the war. Arness became a "beach bum," lived out of his car, and worked intermittently as a salesman and carpenter. Acting was treated equally lackadaisically, but by 1947 Arness had managed to break into Hollywood on the basis of his rugged good looks and his 6'6" frame. Few of his screen roles were memorable, though one has become an object of cult worship: Arness was cast as the menacingly glowing space alien, described by one character as "an intellectual carrot," in The Thing (1951). For a time it looked as though Arness would continue to flounder in supporting roles, while his younger brother, actor Peter Graves, seemed destined for stardom. John Wayne took a liking to Arness when the latter was cast in Wayne's Big Jim McLain (1953). Wayne took it upon himself to line up work for Arness, becoming one of the withdrawn young actor's few friends. In 1955, Wayne was offered the role of Matt Dillon in the TV version of the popular radio series Gunsmoke. Wayne turned it down but recommended that Arness be cast and even went so far as to introduce him to the nation's viewers in a specially filmed prologue to the first Gunsmoke episode. Truth be told, Arness wasn't any keener than Wayne to be tied down to a weekly series, and as each season ended he'd make noises indicating he planned to leave. This game went on for each of the 20 seasons that Gunsmoke was on the air, the annual result being a bigger salary for Arness, more creative control over the program (it was being produced by his own company within a few years) and a sizeable chunk of the profits and residuals. When Gunsmoke finally left the air in 1975, Arness was the only one of the original four principals (including Amanda Blake, Milburn Stone and Dennis Weaver) still appearing on the series. Arness made plans to take it easy after his two-decade Gunsmoke hitch, but was lured back to the tube for a one-shot TV movie, The Macahans (1976). This evolved into the six-hour miniseries How the West Was Won (1977) which in turn led to a single-season weekly series in 1978. All these incarnations starred Arness, back in the saddle as Zeb Macahan. The actor tried to alter his sagebrush image in a 1981 modern-day cop series, McClain's Law -- which being set in the southwest permitted Arness to ride a horse or two. It appeared, however that James Arness would always be Matt Dillon in the hearts and minds of fans, thus Arness obliged his still-faithful public with three Gunsmoke TV movies, the last one (Gunsmoke: The Last Apache) released in 1992. In between these assignments, James Arness starred in a 1988 TV-movie remake of the 1948 western film classic Red River, in which he filled the role previously played by his friend and mentor John Wayne.

Trivia: Milburn Stone got his start in vaudeville as one-half of the song 'n' snappy patter team of Stone and Strain. He worked with several touring theatrical troupes before settling down in Hollywood in 1935, where he played everything from bits to full leads in the B-picture product ground out by such studios as Mascot and Monogram. One of his few appearances in an A-picture was his uncredited but memorable turn as Stephen A. Douglas in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln. During this period, he was also a regular in the low-budget but popular Tailspin Tommy series. He spent the 1940s at Universal in a vast array of character parts, at one point being cast in a leading role only because he physically matched the actor in the film's stock-footage scenes! Full stardom would elude Stone until 1955, when he was cast as the irascible Doc Adams in Gunsmoke. Milburn Stone went on to win an Emmy for this colorful characterization, retiring from the series in 1972 due to ill health.

Trivia: It was while attending Colorado College that American actor/singer Ken Curtis discovered his talent for writing music. After an artistic apprenticeship on the staff of the NBC radio network's music department in the early '30s, Curtis was hired as male vocalist for the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, then went on to work for bandleader Shep Fields. Preferring country-western to swing, Curtis joined the Sons of the Pioneers singing group in the 1940s, and in this capacity appeared in several western films. Columbia Pictures felt that Curtis had star potential, and gave the singer his own series of westerns in 1945, but Ken seemed better suited to supporting roles. He worked a lot for director John Ford in the '40s and '50s, as both singer and actor, before earning starring status again on the 1961 TV adventure series Ripcord. That was the last we saw of the handsome, clean-shaven Ken Curtis; the Ken Curtis that most western fans are familiar with is the scraggly rustic deputy Festus Haggen on the long-running TV Western Gunsmoke. Ken was hired to replace Dennis Weaver (who'd played deputy Chester Good) in 1964, and remained with Gunsmoke until the series ended its 20-year run in 1975. After that, Ken Curtis retired to his spread in Fresno, California, stepping back into the spotlight on occasion for guest appearances at western-movie conventions.

Trivia: Though best known for his Native American characterizations, Michael Ansara was actually of Lebanese descent. Ansara, born in Syria and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, entered Los Angeles City College in 1941, planning to become a doctor. His shyness in class prompted his professor to suggest that Ansara take a dramatics course to bolster his self-confidence. The medical profession's loss turned out to be the acting community's gain: after training at Pasadena Playhouse, Ansara blossomed as a classical actor with such groups as the Hollywood Players' Ring. The role that brought Ansara to the attention of Hollywood's higher-ups was his brief, uncredited appearance as the tormented Judas in The Robe (1953). He went on to be cast as Cochise in the 1956 TV series version of the 1950 20th Century-Fox feature Broken Arrow; while the role brought him fame and fortune, Ansara noted that "the acting range was rather limited. Cochise could do one of two things--stand with his arms folded, looking noble; or stand with his arms at his sides, looking noble." He was allowed a more flexible acting range, as well as a wider vocabulary, in his next Indian assignment, that of Harvard-educated federal marshal Sam Buckhart in the 1959 western series Law of the Plainsman. In later years, Ansara was active in the lucrative world of TV cartoon voiceover work. He was married for several years to actress Barbara Eden.

Trivia: The very feminine Lois Nettleton made her first stage appearance as "The Father" in a grade-school production of Hansel and Gretel. After studying at the Goodman Theatre and the Actors' Studio, 20-year-old Lois made her Broadway boy in 1949's The Biggest Thief in Town, very briefly adopting the stage name of Lydia Scott (she found her given name too plain and "schoolmarmy"). She understudied Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie the Cat in the original 1955 production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, occasionally getting to play the role herself. For her work in the stage play God and Kate Murphy, Lois won the Clarence Derwent Award. While her official film debut was 1962's Period Adjustment, she previously played a minor role in director Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957). Lois' film work, while extensive, has not been as rewarding as her stage and TV endeavors. Bypassing her co-starring stints in the short-term sitcom Accidental Family (1967) and You Can't Take It With You (1987), Lois Nettleton was seen as a regular on the NBC soap opera Brighter Day (1954), enjoyed a healthy two-season run as Joann St. John on the weekly TV version of In the Heat of the Night, and has won two Emmies, the first for the 1977 daytime special The American Woman: Profiles in Courage, and the second for "A Gun for Mandy," a 1983 episode of the syndicated religious anthology Insight. She died of lung cancer at age 80 in January 2008.

Trivia: The original leader of the original "Dead End Kids," American actor Billy Halop came from a theatrical family; his mother was a dancer and his sister Florence was a busy radio actress. After several years as a well-paid radio juvenile, Billy was cast as Tommy Gordon in the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's Dead End (1935), where thanks to his previous credentials he was accorded star status. Travelling to Hollywood with the rest of the Dead End Kids when Samuel Goldwyn produced a film version of the play in 1937, Billy had no trouble lining up important roles, specializing in tough kids, bullies and reform school inmates in such major pictures as Dust be My Destiny (1939) and Tom Brown's School Days (1940). A long-standing rivalry between Halop and fellow Dead-Ender Leo Gorcey (both actors wanted to be the leader of the gang) led to Billy's breakaway from the Dead End Kids and its offspring groups, the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys, though Halop briefly starred in Universal's "Little Tough Guys" films. After serving in World War II, Halop found that he'd grown too old to be effective in the roles that had brought him fame; at one point he was reduced to starring in a cheap "East Side Kids" imitation at PRC studios, Gas House Kids (1946). Diminishing film work, marital difficulties and a drinking problem eventually ate away at Halop's show business career. In 1960, he married a multiple sclerosis victim, and the nursing skills he learned while taking care of his wife led him to steady work as a registered nurse at St. John's Hospital in Malibu. For the rest of his life, Billy Halop supplemented his nursing income with small TV and movie roles, gaining a measure of latter-day prominence as Archie Bunker's cab-driving pal Bert Munson on the '70s TV series All in the Family.

Trivia: Following her training in regional theatre and radio, red-headed actress Amanda Blake was signed by MGM in 1949, where she was briefly groomed for stardom. Among her MGM assignments was 1950's Stars in My Crown, in which she was cast for the first time opposite James Arness. Film fame eluded Amanda, especially after her sizeable role in the 1954 version of A Star is Born was almost completely excised from the release print. By 1955, she had to make do with appearances in such epics as the Bowery Boys' High Society. Amanda's fortunes took a turn for the better later in 1955, when she won the role of Miss Kitty, the euphemistically yclept "hostess" of the Long Branch Saloon on the TV western Gunsmoke, which starred James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon. She remained with Gunsmoke until its next-to-last season in 1974. After Gunsmoke, Amanda went into semi-retirement save for a handful of film projects like the made-for-TV Betrayal (1974), the theatrical releases The Boost (1988) and B.O.R.N (1989), and the 1987 reunion project Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge. Amanda Blake died in 1989 at the age of sixty.